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This is an archive article published on June 17, 2009

Indian community leaders meet Queensland officials,policemen

Indian community leaders met senior officials and policemen of the Australian state of Queensland to discuss the situation in the wake of the recent spate of attacks on Indians in the country.

Indian community leaders met senior officials and policemen of the Australian state of Queensland on Wednesday to discuss the situation in the wake of the recent spate of attacks on Indians in the country.

At a forum held in the Queensland capital Brisbane,Honorary Consul of India Professor Sarva Daman Singh and other leaders met Parliamentary Speaker John Mickel,Minister for Communities Annastacia Palaszczuk,Education Minister Geoff Wilson and police officials to discuss any problems faced by the 12,000 Indians studying and working in Queensland.

Singh said he had spoken to the Indian community there on whether they had encountered any such problems but nothing “untoward” has been noticed in the northeastern state.

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Assistant Commissioner Ian Stewart said the police service was not aware of any racial attacks on Indians.

“We are not seeing at present any trend in Queensland that would indicate members of the Indian community are being targeted,or in fact any other cultural group,” he was quoted as saying by the AAP.

Fourteen cases of assault on Indians have been reported in Australia,mostly in Melbourne and Sydney,in less than a month.

Meanwhile,a Chinese community leader has claimed that a 41-year old researcher from his community who was killed by a gang of hooligans in Melbourne last year was “mistakingly a victim of Indian curry bashing”.

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Zhongjun Cao was assaulted killed last year by a group of eight people and died of head injuries.

“Cao was killed by those who basically wanted to target Indians and as they could find only Cao who was coming home late in the evening in Footscray,he became the victim,” Zhou said,adding,”Cao was killed as attackers thought he was an Indian”.

“After killing Cao,the hooligans then went to Sunshine area where they bashed another man from Mauritius who they thought was an Indian,” Zhou claimed.

Zhou,who is running a campaign to protest lenient sentencing of culprits,said there was an urgent need to address the issue collectively with the Indian student community.

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