http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/the-fear-that-stalks-the-streets-at-night/story-e6frg6n6-1225734283745
BY 6pm it is already dark. Harris Park train station is cold, unwelcoming and completely unstaffed. Not a security guard. No one is taking tickets. The only people about are Indian students.
After the violent demonstrations by their compatriots in Melbourne, unrest and ethnic tension have moved to this western Sydney suburb, not far from Parramatta’s business district.
For three night this week, Indian students have protested, after two of their number were attacked on Monday evening. They say they have been the victims of bashings by local Lebanese youths and claim police are doing nothing to protect them.
It’s mid-afternoon in Harris Park and the first people I speak to are three Indian students. They are friendly, polite, shy; and are clutching a leaflet from the police they have just taken out of their letterbox titled “Keep Yourself Safe”.
It tells them how to dial 000 and how to contact ethnic liaison officers. Hospitality student Ravi Prajapati, 22, knows people who have.
“It is too far from the station to walk at night,” he says. “Anyone at night, they are the ones in trouble. We sometimes see the trouble with other groups. We are here for the studies and when we heard about the incidents, we were scared it would happen to us. Lots of people, some of my friends, have complained to the police. No response.”
Now the police presence is high. At every corner there are patrol cars. As night falls police start pulling up the young who look Middle Eastern.
The students say while “Australia is a very nice place”, their concerned parents have been calling to plead with them to come home. There are reports of 400 students from two cities who have cancelled plans to study here.
“Our families are scared; they want us to come back.They see the video and watch the news,” says Mrugen Gohil, 22, also studying hospitality management. “They just want us to come back.”
Soon afterwards I run into Bob Davis, longtime resident and former chairman of the Harris Park Community Centre. He says the anglo flight from the suburb took place more than 40 years ago, when first Greeks and then Lebanese arrived. It is only in the past five to eight years the Indians have become the dominant ethnic group.
He says there is little doubt race is an element in this week’s conflict, pointing to a story last year in the local newspaper, the Harris Park Journo. The front page story was headlined: “Lebanese Move Out Of Harris Park”. “Why are the Lebanese leaving Harris Park now that it is recovering from a poverty-stricken area into a thriving prosperous business centre?”
Davis says this week’s demonstrations were “making people fearful”.
Local business owners speak with one voice: they want the media to go away, and they want the students to stop demonstrating.
The drama is costing them a fortune. Restaurant owners have had all their weekend bookings cancelled. One restaurateur estimates he is losing more than $5000 a day.
“I have customers ringing me at 10am asking me if it is safe to come here,” says jeweller Gurmaat Tuli.
Around the corner lies a classic example of Harris Park in 2009.
On one side of the street is Billu’s Sweet House, normally packed as one of Sydney’s best Indian restaurants. Opposite is Sweet Land Patisserie, selling Lebanese cakes and coffee.
Both Billu’s Avtar Singh and Sweet Land’s Yousseff El Kadi are classic examples of successful migrants. Both men have prospered in their adopted country. Both are disgusted by what they see as the media’s exaggeration of community tensions, and pose for the camera together to make the point they are friends.
Many senior Indian community leaders argue the conflict has nothing to do with race, but with the behaviour of a few “miscreants”.
“There is nothing racial about this,” says Amarinder Bajwa, national co-ordinator for the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin.
“It is very straightforward — some anti-social elements, miscreants, are creating the problems. We must work cohesively with the other communities to keep it as a law and order issue and do not colour it with racial tones,” he says. “These incidents are similar and parallel in nature to defacing of trains, graffiti on the public spaces and muggings that happen all over the metros in Australia.”
This week there have been a series of meetings between police, local councillors and leaders of the Indian and Lebanese communities.
Community leader Immanuel Selvaraj pleads with Indian students to stop demonstrating. He says the problems, such as eggs being thrown at Indians from car windows, is the work a small group and police must know who they are and should arrest them.
He says there had been a strong perception among students that their concerns were not being listened to, but this was no longer the case, with everyone from the local mayor to the Prime Minister pledging to act.
As the evening wears on, and Sweet Land closes early so as not to provide any excuse for young Lebanese to enter the area after dark, many local leaders gather at Billu’s, including Parramatta Lord Mayor Tony Issa, who is of Lebanese origin.
“Even Lebanese are being mugged, Aussies are being mugged — it is not only that Indians have been mugged,” he says. “These things have grown out of all proportion for these students because they are living in very hard conditions. I want the media to get out and leave the community alone.”