Tasmanians with migrant backgrounds claim racist attacks are on the rise, leading to worries about their safety. Some are calling for a change to current legislation that doesn't allow police to record or classify racial or other hate crimes.
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00:00 Since opening his Nepalese grocery store in Hobart, Toya Rajbhatarai has faced repeated incidents of property destruction and assaults on him and his staff.
00:11 "They use very vulgar words and sometimes they say go back to your country and all those kind of words."
00:17 Mr Rajbhatarai and his family moved from Nepal to Sydney in 2009. But he says he didn't face racial abuse until they moved to Hobart.
00:26 "I can't send my wife and my children to the park because anything can happen at any time, anyway. So everyone is scared."
00:36 "I hear stories every other day now. There are incidents where people have assaulted women, people have pulled off their hijabs in the buses."
00:47 Eamon Jeffrey from Tasmania's Multicultural Council says migrants are afraid to report racist attacks.
00:53 "People feel that they might lose their visas, they might jeopardise their visas. People think that if they report it will bring shame to them.
01:02 That people will say, 'oh, this has happened to you'. So there are a lot of myths around reporting that we need to address together."
01:08 Many people with migrant backgrounds face barriers when it comes to reporting to police.
01:13 But on top of that, with little data available on racist crimes, it's hard to know for sure what the extent of the problem is.
01:20 The Multicultural Council wants police to keep better records of when crimes are racially motivated.
01:26 It also wants a new category of racially motivated offences.
01:30 Currently, Western Australia is the only state where racially motivated crimes are a specific offence.
01:37 "So that reasonable action can be taken according to that."
01:41 Tasmania police says identifying the motivation behind a crime is difficult,
01:45 so recording whether or not racism was a factor could be problematic.
01:50 Police say any details of potential racial prejudice or hatred is shared with the courts and may influence sentencing.
01:57 In the meantime, Ms Jaffrey wants all Tasmanians to report racially motivated crimes.
02:03 "Hate based crime could be with anyone. Everyone needs to report.
02:07 It is our duty of care as a Tasmanian to help other people feel safe in this place."
02:12 in this place.
02:14 [BLANK_AUDIO]