Australian For Murder?

While going through the e-paper of TOI today, I came across an article about another Indian death in Australia. I promptly opened up the TOI website for more information. Instead I was greeted by an ad for Tata's new car. It kept telling me about the car's "amazing" features. Finally after 10 odd seconds, fed up with my lack of interest, it took me to the news site. There a headline screamed, "Australian Deputy PM justifies the attacks on Indians". Enraged, I dragged my mouse cursor on to the headline in the hope that I would click it. Instead an ad came up, asking me to "Do the new", whatever that is supposed to mean. After wasting another 5 seconds and thoroughly irritated by the TOI people, I was able to click on the link. And what lay beneath was surprising to say the least. What the Australian Deputy PM had said was,

In big cities around the world we do see acts of violence from time to time; that happens in Melbourne, it happens in Mumbai, it happens in New York, it happens in London.

Now I cannot see what is wrong in this? I don't think that the Oz Deputy PM was justifying the attack. She was just stating facts as they are. An hour later, when I revisited the site, the title of the story had changed to "Acts of violence occur in big cities: Oz deputy PM". The original title had served its purpose of creating sensationalism.

If we look at the facts, the majority of Indians going to Australia are from rural background (mostly from Punjab) who bribe their way to a visa of Australia. They live in distant suburbs because they are cheaper. They work night shifts for they have classes in the day. They travel on public transport in the dead of the night. Thus, there is a high probability of them getting mugged or attacked because there are anti-social elements everywhere in the world who are more active at night.

When thousand of Indians get murdered daily in their own country, no one bats an eyelid. But just to gather some cheap publicity and media frenzy, the attacks on Indians in Australia is overhyped. This is not to say that these incidents are justified or that they should be taken lightly. Every act of violence is disgusting and the criminals should be brought to book. But to paint an entire nation with the same brush of racism is definitely wrong.

These attackers are a menace to society. It doesn't matter whether their attacks were racially motivated. They should be punished to the maximum extent. Instead of showing mere tokenism by issuing travel advisory against Australia, Indian government should help its Australian counterparts in this endeavour . We have to accept the fact that no nation's police can patrol each and every nook and corner of the country. We need Australia as much as it needs us, if not more.