New Delhi: Toeing a different line than
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, his firebrand nephew Van
Thanh Rudd has said the attacks on Indian students in his
country were "racially motivated".
"These attacks on Indians are racially motivated, I
have no doubt in my mind about that. Australians are racist,"
he said in an interview to a weekly magazine.
35-year-old Rudd, leader of the Revolutionary
Socialist Party, had created a stir on January 26, the
Australian national day, when he walked into the Melbourne
Park wearing the infamous Klu Klux Klan outfit to protest
attacks on Indian students. He was fined 234 Australian
dollars by the Victorian police.
Asked whether racism was limited among certain
sections, he said, "It is more widespread than we want to
accept. There is a culture of racism that comes from our
schools, our education system. As a son of a Vietnamese
mother, I too experienced racial abuse in school."
Terming the decision to allow foreign students to
study in Australia as a "marriage of convenience", Rudd said,
"you need the students because you earn the revenue, and you
need a lot of your work to be done by them. But you also want
to treat them as refugees. You discriminate against them."
-PTI
First Published: Saturday, January 30, 2010, 00:41