Honouring people like security guard at Bondi stabbing, Muhammad Taha, can help ease social tensions, says Giridharan Sivaraman
Giridharan Sivaraman, Australia’s new race discrimination commissioner, has taken on the role when racial and religious tensions are being felt around the country.Giridharan Sivaraman, Australia’s new race discrimination commissioner, has taken on the role when racial and religious tensions are being felt around the country.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundupWhile neither attack appears to be racially motivated, Sivaraman knows overseas wars are having an impact on social cohesion locally. Sivaraman says his interest in anti-discrimination stemmed from experiences he and his family faced growing up. The new commissioner moved to Australia as a kid after he and his family were displaced by the civil war in Sri Lanka. Sivaraman says he experienced racism growing up as a “brown kid” in westernIt’s part of the reason he’s taking on an initiative introduced under the Howard government, and maintained by successive governments for more than two decades – Harmony Day.
The second of the stabbing attacks in Sydney happened in an Assyrian Orthodox church, called Christ the Good Shepherd church, with the alleged perpetrator, a 16-year-old, alleged to have been religiously motivated.over the stabbing of a bishop in Wakeley last week. The stabbing at a Bondi Junction shopping centre two days earlier in which six people – including five women – were killed, was not labelled a terrorist attack.
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