Attacks on students

Aussie political commentator Andrew Bolt points out that the majority of recent "racist" attacks on Indian students are actually non-racially motivated criminal attacks committed by recent immigrants from non-western countries.

Rather than being a sign of racism by "redneck" mainstream Australians, as the mainstream media is suggesting, the increase in attacks is at least partly due to political correctness, with the hamstrung police failing to effectively crack down on the perpetrators for fear of offending other non-white minorities.

It seems that the Australian media is intent on making up for Australia's previous White Australia Policy with a new blame white Australia policy.

A fairly similar situation occurred in New Zealand last year, when Asian shop keepers were involved in a protest against attacks on Asian shops by Pacific Island immigrants, with the protestors claiming the attacks weren't being taken seriously enough by the police.

Putting aside the issue of whether there's been an increase in racially motivated attacks, I'm getting the impression that crime against overseas students is on the increase in many western countries.

From an underclass perspective, overseas students are a tempting target since they are perceived as being easily physically intimidated and often share the same neighborhoods where cheap housing is available. Inevitably, they also tend to be more naive than locals about what areas to avoid and in what sort of situations they are most likely to get into trouble.

When I lived near a student area in Manchester in northern England, there were lots of reports of students being mugged, with one group of young Pakistani men becoming so bold as to hold up individual students at knife or air pistol point and then take them on enforced shopping sprees around various parts of the city.

Domestic students from other parts of Britain were also targeted quite frequently (Manchester has a high population of students from the more affluent south of England) with an increasing number of attacks on female students by taxi drivers, being reported in the local media.

Closer to home, I recently heard on the radio that Christchurch Police have reported burglaries are up in the student-dwelling areas in the west of the city, with local crims perceiving students to be a bit blase about home security.