Gheesh!  I told you about the on-going violence against Indian immigrants to Australia here last month.  Now the police chief in Victoria has advised Indians to look poor to avoid being robbed or killed.

What this article in The Age doesn’t tell you is that the violence toward Indians isn’t coming from white Australians, as a casual reader might assume, but from other ethnic groups and most likely Lebanese Muslims(?) as our commenters to the January post have confirmed.

AN INDIAN student spokesman has slammed as ridiculous Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland’s advice that Indian students should not work as taxi drivers and should ”look as poor as you can” to avoid being assaulted.

”Don’t display your iPods, don’t display your valuable watch, don’t display your valuable jewellery. Try to look as poor as you can,” Mr Overland said before adding that foreign students should, however, try to avoid living in Melbourne’s poorer suburbs where crime rates are higher.

[…..] 

Mr Overland made the comments at an international students’ safety forum attended by about 150 people in the city yesterday.

While the speech seemed to be well received at the time, Federation of Indian Students of Australia secretary Gautam Gupta later blasted Mr Overland’s advice, saying taxi drivers had a right to feel safe no matter what their nationality. ”It’s a workplace. Every workplace should be safe. I think it’s a ridiculous idea. It is blaming the worker. It is blaming the victim,” he said.

Mr Gupta said Indians shouldn’t have to look ”poor” to feel safe.

”What is he saying? Indians don’t have the right to be rich? And if they look rich, do they maybe have to get bashed? On one hand, everyone should look poor. On the other, don’t live in poor areas. I don’t understand.”

If you didn’t have any background for this story, a reader would assume that white Australians are attacking the Indian immigrants.  Svend (and other commenters) tells us this:

They’re being attacked by Lebs. As if your average white Aussie cares about Indians.

Chief Overland:  The attacks have little to do with the wealth of the victims, or are you advising white Australians to pretend to be poor too?

Isn’t diversity beautiful!