The prime minister has broken his silence on the alleged Islamophobic attacks on two women at a suburban shopping centre almost a week after the assaults.
Anthony Albanese was quizzed on Wednesday about , with one pushed to the floor, in separate incidents at a mall at Epping in Melbourne’s north on 13 February.
“I find this outrageous, that people were assaulted for who they are and attacks on the basis of people’s race or their religious belief are un-Australian, they are outrageous,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne on Wednesday.
“The perpetrators should be held fully to account and face the full force of the law.”
Fatima Payman’s criticism of Anthony Albanese
Albanese’s comments come after independent senator Fatima Payman criticised the media and politicians over their responses to the alleged Islamophobic incidents in a video posted to social media on Tuesday.
Payman questioned why Albanese had not done more to publicly condemn the alleged incidents and accused the “right-wing media” of showing “double standards” by not covering them to the same extent as the .
“Crickets from the PM and lowkey reporting from journos when it comes to Islamophobic attacks,” Payman said.
“Where is the outrage?”
Independent senator Fatima Payman has questioned why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has not done more to publicly condemn the alleged Islamophobic attacks on two women in Melbourne. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
Echoing Payman’s comments, the Islamic Council of Victoria’s Adel Salman said Australian leaders should be treating anti-Muslim hatred as seriously as they have antisemitism and other hate-based crimes.
“They know it’s real, they know it hurts Muslims, they know it kills Muslims,” he told SBS News, pointing to the Christchurch terrorist attack and other Islamophobic incidents overseas.
“Why is the government so reluctant to take such a strong stance as they have with antisemitism?”
The physical security of Australian Muslims was being threatened almost daily, and the response from authorities and political leaders was “grossly insufficient”, Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Rateb Jneid said.
“When compared to the swift and significant attention given to less-severe incidents affecting other communities, the disparity in response is not only apparent but also unacceptable,” he said.
Anthony Albanese says race and faith-based attacks ‘an outrage’
Albanese denies Australians view Islamophobia differently from antisemitism.
“All I can do is talk about the way that I look at it and I regard any attacks on the basis of race or people’s faith as being an outrage and I think that overwhelmingly Australians are harmonious,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne.
The victims of the Epping attack, one of who is pregnant, were taken to hospital with bruises, scratches and potentially long-term physical injuries, the Australian National Imams Council said.
Comissioner says Australia has ‘a problem with racism’
Race discrimination commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman said the incidents showed Islamophobia was a significant concern in Australia and that it often manifested in violence towards visibly Muslim women.
Australia’s race discrimination commissioner, Giridharan Sivaraman, says social cohesion comes with acknowledging that racism exists. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
“It was shocking to hear about these attacks — they were violent, unprovoked, distressing,” Sivaraman told SBS News.
“Social cohesion is a word that gets thrown around — in reality, we’re not going to get along unless we acknowledge that racism exists unless we take real steps to deal with it.”
— With additional reporting from the Australian Associated Press.
