Amid strains in Indo-Australia ties due to a spate of attacks on Indian students, a city in Queensland has launched a “harmony” website aimed at telling “a lot of great stories” about the bilateral relations and facilitating people of the two countries to share their experiences.
The Aussie-India Harmony website has been established by Ipswich in conjunction with Indian IT services company Dhanush InfoTech, which recently set up its regional headquarters in the city suburb of Springfield, southwest of Brisbane.
People of both nations could use the Aussie-India Harmony forum as a platform to voice their feelings through posting good and positive comments and shared experiences, said Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale.
Negative events involving Indians have overshadowed the many positive personal and business relations between the two countries, he said, referring to the attacks on Indians in Australia.
“This [the website] is about making sure we tell a lot of great stories of Australia-India relations,” said Mr. Pisasale.
“All this negative stuff that’s happening has to be nipped in the bud. It doesn’t reflect what Australia is all about. Australia is a wonderful country that embraces multiculturalism, and the website’s all about working together for peace and harmony.”
Over 100 incidents of attacks on Indians, particularly students, were reported in 2009 in Australia and the assaults have continued this year unabated.
Nitin Garg (21), who was stabbed to death by unidentified assailants while he was on his way to his part-time job in a restaurant here, was the first victim of such assaults this year.
The Australian Government had given a dossier on the attacks to India, which showed that nearly half of the assailants had been juveniles.
Under pressure from India, Australia also set up a high-level Ministerial working group to comprehensively study the slew of attacks on Indians in the country.
