Indian students 'more likely to be robbed, assaulted'

INDIAN students are significantly more likely to be robbed than most Australians and also more likely to be assaulted than students from other countries, says the Australian Institute of Criminology.

The report follows news that the number of student visa applications from India dropped almost 63 per cent in the last financial year.

Director of the AIC, Dr Adam Tomison, who co-wrote the report released yesterday, said: ''What we found was the proportion of robberies of Indian students occurring in commercial locations, for example taxis, service stations, convenience stores, as part of the night-time economy was pretty much double that recorded for our students from other countries.''

The research showed Indian students were equally or less likely to be assaulted than the general Australian population. But they were more likely to be robbed than most Australians, to be assaulted than any other group of overseas students to be assaulted in commercial retail locations and in, or near, public transport facilities than the general population.

Indian male students in Victoria had a higher or equal rate of assault than all Victorian males in 2006 and 2007.

The research surveyed 13,204 international students who were victims of 14,855 crimes (3201 assaults, 3206 robberies and 8440 thefts of unsupervised goods) between 2005 and 2009 from the top five source countries: India, China, South Korea, the United States and Malaysia.

Dr Tomison warned against interpreting the results as evidence of racism. ''We couldn't access what the offenders were thinking when they committed these crimes.''

He said the data showed that Indian students were more likely to have high-risk jobs where they were working night shifts by themselves and catching public transport to go home late at night. ''I'm not ruling [racism] out certainly and I think more work is needed in that area … but we've also found other factors especially employment which give cause for us to think that racial motivation in assault is not the only thing that leads to why these crimes are committed.''

The federal Race Discrimination Commissioner, Graham Innes, yesterday expressed doubts on some of the research methods used, saying more research was needed ''to help us better understand which factors, including racial appearance, are most influential in crimes against international students''.

The report noted that the number of international students in the country had grown substantially to more than 300,000 granted international student visas every year, making international education Australia's third-largest export industry.