Melbourne: A youth was arrested for "riotous behaviour" during a peace rally held by Indian students in Melbourne demanding justice for victims of growing racial attacks against them in Australia.
Quoting local media and community sources, Saurabh Azad, who was present at the scene in Melbourne, told NDTV.com that some people were detained after 5000 angry students took to the streets in Melbourne on Sunday. The identity of those arrested or the exact charges against them could not be confirmed at this point.
The peace rally, organised by the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA) to create awareness about hate crimes against Sourabh Sharma, Shravan Kumar, Baljinder Singh and many others, began at around 12 noon from the Federation Square and students then marched all the way to the Victorian State Parliament building.
Turning the slogan 'Victoria is the place to be' on its head, the protestors were heard shouting that 'Victoria is not the place to be'. Besides a huge turnout from the Indian community in Australia, the rally also saw some Australians join in to express their solidarity. There was huge police presence, with mounted squads and armed cops maintaining vigil. But while the mood at the rally was aggressive, it was not violent, claims Azad who was present at Federation Square all afternoon.
"There is so much pent-up anger among people here. I think what students feel most frustrated about is the police inaction. The cops here take so much time just to respond to a complaint when an Indian student faces attack. This is an attempt to bring the problem of our community before the Australian people and thereby put pressure on the Victorian state government and the Australian federal authorities to act," he says on the phone from Melbourne.
The tactic to block Federation Square, Melbourne's city hub, and bring life to a standstill, seems to be working.
"There is so much ignorance here. The common man on the street in Australia is just not aware that Indian students, who bring in so much revenue to the country, are being targeted with such brutality. But now with their lives suddenly disrupted by a rally of this kind, they are beginning to ask questions...who are these protestors, what do they want, and so on. Hopefully they will ask the same questions of their leaders and force them to address the concerns of the Indian students a little more seriously than they have in the past," says Azad.
The faith in the local political system certainly seems to be at an all-time low among the students. Australian opposition leaders who tried to address the rally were booed away by the protestors. Azad holds the Australian media guilty of similar apathy.
"The local media too has never taken up the cause of the Indian students. Even now after so much hue and cry, there is just one television channel covering the rally. In fact no one except the FISA has done anything to raise awareness about the problems being faced by the students," he says.
According to Azad, while Sunday's rally was not the best organised, it did provide an outlet for Indian students in Australia to vent their frustration: "No one called anybody for this rally. For days now SMS have been circulating asking students to get together to register their protest. And I guess they were just waiting for an opportunity like this to draw the attention of the whole country and people in India to their plight."