Sudanese and Vietnamese in Australia
Reid Butler, Nine News, December 31, 2018
“There will be huge conflict. We need to take action.”
That’s the ominous warning from a masked Vietnamese teenager. He’s among many in his Melbourne community who’ve vowed revenge on the Sudanese after a string of brazen daylight assaults at shopping strips.
In a bombshell interview, the young man reveals what’s led to the escalating tensions between the two minority groups in the suburbs.
“We must mass protest right now, and band together and hurt any African youths in our way,” he told A Current Affair from a secret location in the city’s north-west.
A Current Affair has also obtained exclusive vision of vicious assaults on the shopping strips which have stoked ethnic tensions.
Anger between minority groups has been escalating steadily in recent months, with violence repeatedly erupting in St Albans and at St Kilda and Chelsea beach.
“This is a race war and I’ve never seen it this bad,” the Woolworths worker said.
Businesses have been repeatedly targeted along one strip in St Albans, leading to young Vietnamese men stationing themselves outside the cafes, ready to defend their turf.
It comes as Victoria police confirm the existence of a new gang in Melbourne, known as the Blood Drill Killers.
Several young members of the BDK were thought to be involved in recent brawls in St Albans.
Some of the exclusive vision obtained by A Current Affair is understood to show one of the Blood Drill Killer gang’s vicious assaults.
The footage was gathered as part of a special investigation into the simmering racial tensions.
Video also surfaced over the weekend of far-right group United Patriots Front harassing African youths, who appeared to be doing nothing wrong, at St Kilda.
Neil Erickson and a friend filmed the group of people despite repeated requests to stop from both the young men, and Victoria Police.
Social analyst David Chalke said while crime gangs had been around forever, the combination of race and cultural tensions was “far more incendiary”.
“The issue now is so out of control, that the best and immediate solution is stronger, firmer, visible policing,” he said.
