Normally, Murdoch’s racists on his newspapers in Sydney and Melbourne, Tim Blair and Piers Akerman at Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Andrew Bolt at Melbourne’s Herald Sun, wouldn’t be able to resist making some comment about the recent spate of attacks on Indian in Melbourne. But, while it is true that Bolt is on leave, both Blair and Akerman are very active with their blogs in Sydney yet both have been strangely silent on the issue.
Last Saturday four unidentified men set fire to 29-year-old Jaspreet Singh in Melbourne while a little over a week ago 21-year-old Nitin Garg, a student also in Melbourne, was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant or assailants.
Police were very quick to insist that the attacks were not racially motivated despite the fact that none of the culprits have yet been caught. Police offered no evidence to support their assertion. The Victorian government, anxious to keep relations sweet with the Indian government in order to protect a very lucrative education industry offered to overseas students, likewise have insisted that the attacks were not racially motivated. Julia Gillard, Australia’s deputy prime minister, has also denied any racial motivation for the attacks.
Clearly, the attacks have created a massive diplomatic problem which, just as clearly, the Australian government wants to maintain control of. While here in Australia we like to think we have a ‘free’ press, there are times when it is in the government’s interest to ask the media to limit discussion of sensitive issues like this to simply the facts without proffering too much opinion and certainly not to aggravate the problem by allowing it to be discussed on the mainstream newspaper’s blogs – particularly the right-wing racist ones run by Blair, Akerman and Bolt, et al.
These people have done enough damage to Australia with their racist outbursts over the years. Perhaps it’s time they should be silenced for good. The world would be a far better place without these people shoving the hate on the rest of us.
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