Strongly condemn racist attacks on Indian students and workers in Australia

Statement issued by the Delhi committee of Hind Naujawan Ekta Sabha on 20 June, 2009

Dear friends,

The Delhi committee of Hind Naujawan Ekta Sabha (HNES) strongly condemns the attack on Indian students and workers in Australia and demands that the Indian State should take initiatives to ensure, through the government of Australia, severe punishment for the perpetrators of this racist violence.

It is obvious that in the absence of good alternatives in higher education in India, millions of Indian students turn to US, UK, Canada, Australia, and other countries. Besides this millions of Indians are forced to go to gulf countries every year in search of livelihood. 

Such racist attacks in Australia are neither first nor the last. Racist attacks on Indian students and workers have been organized time and again in different countries such as US, Canada, Germany, France, UK and others. Passing sarcastic racist remarks, provocation, physical violence, etc are all different forms of this racist violence. According to one of the reports, passports of our youth, women and men are taken away and they are kept in inhuman conditions in gulf countries. They are made to do all kinds of jobs. Women workers even face physical abuse. All this happens with the knowledge of the rulers of those countries and our country and their respective embassies. Due to the prevalent capitalist system in India millions of youth are deprived of quality education and similarly millions of educated youth face unemployment. They are forced to go to other countries spending all their money to seek employment and education.

Most of the students end up working there to be able to pay their fee. Capitalist system is prevalent in those countries too. Capitalists always like to keep an army of unemployed people as it helps them to pressurize the available workforce to work for minimum possible wages and in difficult conditions. They can also threaten to throw out the workers as there are many unemployed people ready to work at any price. It is also very common to use several methods – to subject students and workers from other countries to racist attacks, confiscate their passports, cancel their visas, suspect them and brand them as terrorists, put them behind bars for smallest of offences, etc –  to keep them in a helpless situation. All this is done to ensure availability of cheap labour force through non-resident workers to maximize capitalists’ profits. It also helps them to keep the general wage and working conditions of workers low.

Racist propaganda through television and newspapers is used 24/7 to break the unity of workers. The burden of recession and economic crisis-for which the capitalists themselves and this capitalist system are responsible–is put on the workers through wage cuts and lay-offs. On the top of all this capitalists’ propaganda of “workers coming from other countries taking away jobs of the resident workers” is used for making workers fight among themselves so that the capitalists can happily continue to reap higher and higher profits. Students are also affected by this continuous propaganda.

The Indian state and its representatives abroad are well aware of all this but in most of the occasions they register protests just for formality sake and do not take any action beyond that. Victimized students, workers and their families are forced to face all the problems themselves. Finally, how can we expect a government to provide security to our brethren living abroad when it can’t ensure prosperity and security to its citizens here and forces them to go to other countries?

Even within our country capitalists and their governments keep organizing similar fights among workers. Recently, workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were blamed for the unemployment situation in Maharashtra and several attacks were organized on them. Similarly Bangladeshi citizens are also tortured in our country on the same pretext. In India, there are many such examples of spreading fear and terror amongst people by organizing attacks on them by blaming them for different problems in the name of their religion, region, caste, etc. All this is done by the state for distracting the people from the real problems facing them and to also break the unity of fighting people.

Hind Naujawan Ekta Sabha believes that the life, self-respect and honour of each and every Indian student and worker living outside India is precious to us. HNES demands that the Indian state should provide quality higher education, livelihood, prosperity and security to all its citizens as their right. We demand that the Indian state should guarantee safety and security of all the Indian students and workers abroad.

We appeal to all the Indian students and workers, and students and workers from those countries to be alert and watch out for the dirty conspiracies of the capitalists to divide us.  An attack on one is an attack on all, and our common enemies are capitalists from our countries and the global imperialist system. We should guard our unity and fight relentlessly for our rights and side by side also take our fight forward to completely wipe out this capitalist-imperialist system.

HNES calls on every Indian youth to fight for an India where the economy runs to provide prosperity and security to all and where children and youth are nurtured as an invaluable future force. Also where sovereignty, i.e. power to take decisions that affect the society and implement them lies in the hands of toiling men, women and youth.

Organize, become rulers and change the society!