Tackling Racism in Australia: Azlan Petra on multiculturalism, racial profiling and the race debate

Over the last few months, changes to the Racial Discrimination Act have sparked much discussion about racism in Australia. Recently, a video recorded on a phone of a woman racially abusing another on public transport went viral.

Azlan Petra has made fighting against racism his career, working with asylum seekers, humanitarian groups and communities around the world. He’s currently working to address racial profiling in Victoria – which you may remember us talking about way back last year with Maki Issa, one of the African men involved in the civil case against Victoria Police. In his spare time, Azlan occasionally blogs and tweets for our friends The Two Chairs, an anti-racism online project.

Tweets by @whereRUfrom_au

Azlan talks to us about growing up in multicultural Malaysia, the legal side of racism discussion in Australia and where we’re at in terms of addressing it.

Click here to download

LINK: The Two Chairs

Follow @azlanpetra on Twitter

Maki Issa on racial profiling in Victoria

Maki Issa

A group of African men who host 3CR radio’s ‘African-Australian Voice‘ launched a civil case against Victoria Police over racial profiling. The men themselves and other African people in the Victorian suburbs of Flemington and Kensington have suffered physical and verbal racist abuse from police over the last few years.

Since the beginning of the case, it was discovered that Victoria Police had in fact been targeting Africans under a secret operation called Operation Molto. Numerous community consultations have encouraged African people to come forward to talk about bad encounters they’ve had with police.

Maki Issa, one of the men involved with the case, talked to Where are you From? about the aftermath of the case and what it means for the African community in Flemington and Kensington.

Click here to download the podcast.