AS protests grow louder against allegedly race-motivated attacks against Indian students in Australia, police say the number of such robberies and assaults is falling.
Police commander Trevor Carter, whose division covers Melbourne's west, the national hotspot for attacks, said yesterday assaults on Indians had declined over the past three months.
However, the police chief's comments coincided with another attack, in which a 21-year-old Indian student was slashed with a box-cutter when confronted yesterday afternoon by five men who demanded money and cigarettes at Dandenong, in Melbourne's southeast.
Police said there was nothing to indicate that the assault, which within hours was being widely reported on Indian news websites, was racially motivated.
But following a series of such incidents, Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls said yesterday the state Government was planning to introduce a law requiring judges to "take into account whether or not a crime has been committed purely based on hatred or vilification of a particular group" and to apply tougher sentences if so.
However, one of Australia's leading experts on race hate attacks, Sydney-based Jeremy Jones, said that while "racists are everywhere", there was no sign of a surge in organised racist groups in Australia.
He said that, overall, Australia was "pretty close to world's best practice in inter-communal relations".
"My recent experience is that those responsible are most likely to be idiotic thugs," said Mr Jones, a former executive president of the Australian Council ofJewry.
"Then racist groups, who are generally not able to organise the purchase of a pizza, jump aboard and claim credit."
Mr Carter said that, over the past six or seven years, there had been a big increase in the number of international students, with a concentration especially of Indian students in and around the inner-western suburbs.
He said that, in 2006-07, police had seen a rise in robberies and assaults in the general community, Indians among the victims.
Police investigating a crime would make their own assessment of a victim's ethnicity, but this might be extremely broad; a person from Fiji or Pakistan might be described, for instance, as "Indian".
Police became concerned about this trend some time ago, Mr Carter said, and had increased their presence at danger spots, especially public transport and shopping centres.
At the same time, Mr Carter said, police had been conducting covert operations in areas of greatest concern.
The police also formed at the start of this year a reference group with the Indian community in the west. Mr Carter said that "despite our efforts" police continued to see attacks against Indians in which robbers targeted laptop computers, mobile phones, iPods and cash.
"It was clear the problem needed police interventions, and needed support from the community," Mr Carter said. "We shared their concerns."
Mr Carter said that, although crimes were trending down, "that doesn't mean we take the foot off the pedal".
He said police believed that Indian students had suffered disproportionately because they were more vulnerable. Many needed to take jobs, often at late hours, to support themselves, and they used public transport heavily, often at times when few other passengers were travelling.
Offenders, Mr Carter said, reflected the broad range of ethnicity in the region, with most crimes coming from single attackers or groups of two or three.
"We're not hearing of such crimes being associated with words derogatory to Indians."
Associate professor Gail Mason of the University of Technology, Sydney, said most race-hate crimes tended to be opportunistic rather than planned.
She believed the phrase "curry bashing" -- not in wide currency in Australia until the past few days -- had been introduced from Britain, where such crimes appeared to be more common.
Ms Mason said data about hate crimes was inadequate, partly because police needed better training in identifying motives.
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