Eldery “Jap” beaten to death in Australia

A 23-year-old man in Australia has been arrested for drunkenly beating to death an Asian whom he believed was Japanese:
James Anthony Dean-Willcocks, of Illawong, was yesterday charged with the murder of Magno Alvarado, 67.
Residents of Elouera Rd, Cronulla, told police of being woken about 5.30am on Saturday by a male yelling: “F … off back to Japan”.
[...]
Police will allege Dean-Willcocks was heard yelling “Ya Jap”.
Another described seeing Mr Alvarado tackled, “body-slammed” and punched many times.
One witness told police he yelled at Dean-Willcocks to stop and asked what he was doing.
“Mate, he’s Japanese and he deserves it,” the accused allegedly answered.
It is understood Mr Alvarado was Filipino.
As you might expect, Japanese netizens who read this news did not have very good things to say about Australia. Here are a few translations of 2channel comments that were posted up on Itai News:
What do you expect from a racist country?
— White pigs can’t distinguish between Japanese and Filipinos.
— Those guys really hate Japanese and Chinese, don’t they?
— What a foolish and wild nationality.
— Aust-Korea’s the same as it ever was…
I feel really lucky that I wasn’t born in such a barbaric country.— A country that saves whales yet beats Filipinos to death.
— How sad.
Well, there are deviants like these no matter what country you’re in.— Better watch out if you’re going on a trip to Australia.
— It’s because White Australia’s policies are still firmly rooted there, even before all of that whaling stuff. There have been attacks on people of color ever since the old days.
— Is racism really that intense in Australia?
I mean, the aborigines certainly suffer from racism, but…— Seems like the whales are the smarter ones.
— The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should stop travel to Aust-Korea!
Note: Aust-Korea is a pejorative slang term used against Australia/Australians. It combines the names of Australia and Korea.

[The Japanese news article translations in this post were provided by myGengo's simple human translation system.]
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“How sad.
Well, there are deviants like these no matter what country you’re in.”
- Well said.
Whats up with these posts recently showing Japanese forum reactions? It’s interesting every now and then, but you’ve been posting this kind of stuff a lot recently and I think it may causing people to develop misconceptions of Japanese people, when most people on forums anywhere tend to post some pretty diverse reactions. Good work, but all I’m saying is that I’d rather read the reactions of readers on this site, rather than read the reactions of reactions. I mean posting crap like “White pigs can’t distinguish between Japanese and Filipinos.” is just trying to get a rise out of people because racism fueled by racism makes absolutely no sense.This kind of crap just makes people more biased.
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It does seem like it.
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myGengo gave me some credit points to use as a test of their service. I’ve pretty much been borrowing a page from ChinaSmack.com’s idea book by translating interesting and inflammatory comments left on forums.
I try to find some smart comments, like the one about crazy people in any country, but I feel it would be unrepresentative of 2-channel if I didn’t also include some of the really crude comments (which make up the majority of comments on just about any hugely popular site in any country: just look at YouTube).
This does not strike me as a particularly worthwhile way to use such translations. It was a little bit interesting to see 4chan comments at first, but now they’ve all started to blend together. What we’re presented with is always the same blend of stupid or hateful comments with the odd reasonable one thrown in- probably the same as you’d find in any language. Very few of them actually make valid points for discussion, they are all pretty straight forward opinions. The reasonable ones don’t require response, the stupid ones don’t deserve them.
Like I said, it was interesting at first, but now it’s starting to wash. Particularly, I sort of wonder if you get your money’s worth translating a lot of short comments. In my (admittedly limited) experience, the difficulty of a translation increases exponentially with length- snappy dialogue is easier than long narrative blocks, for instance. Comments like this are so simple you could drop some of them into google translator and polish the results up a bit.
I suppose it’s a little late to say all this and I don’t mean to come off as offensive, I just wanted to voice my opinion on this stuff.
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I love these posts, keep them going James!
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post:
you can post this stuff. no problem.
though a look at youtube’s comments shows how little representative it is.
content:
there are differnet forms of racisms against different people. comments like “australia is a racist country” bring us nowhere. differentiated view please!
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I agree with K, what is with using 2 chan as a source of any information? Seriously, I don’t see news reports here in the US using 4 chan as a reliable source of information. It really discredits any reporter. It’s just as bad as the idiot who did the beating in the first place.
Irregardless of what the nationality of the man that was beaten, it was an act of violence and does happen everywhere in this world. Report it as such.
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This isn’t just a news report, and I’m not a reporter.
2channel (http://www.2ch.net/) is one of the most popular sites in Japan, and it’s mainstream enough for the Prime Minister to list it as one of his favorite sites. It has some diehard users, but it’s not really fair to say it’s the same as 4chan.
http://www.2chan.net/ is the Japanese equivalent of 4chan.
I actually think it’s reasonable to use 2ch comments as it’s popularity and widespread use is comparable to Facebook or Twitter in the west (quite often you can find university students and bored office workers 2ch’ing away).
Chinasmack does have quite a large following, and I do think it is partly because you can see the general reaction from netizens (and surprisingly, most of it is not that racist, the criticism is pretty interesting because you can see the cultural values they feel are insulted). Pretty cool to see it here too, cheers James.
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The one thing I think might bias the apparent opinion presented here apart from what comments James chooses himself, is that translating only the 2ch forum responses selected to be featured on sites like itai news, inevitably reflect the opinions of the creator of the middle-man so to speak.
For an issue, there may be a whole half of the responses that have a favorable reaction to it, but it may be entirely ignored in favor of presenting a series of amusing rants of outrage on the blog.
Although itai news has dropped the practice recently, the person maintaining it used to visually highlight opinions contrary to the “general consensus” or just plain dumb comments, followed up by a series of rebuttals and insults thrown at the person. Though this is pretty much how it works in 2ch itself, what comments are chosen to be highlighted shows those sites aren’t quite neutral.
And because it’s highly impractical to present the entire 1000-reply long thread on a blog, often the only way to get an accurate reading of the reactions posted on 2ch is to go to the actual thread and slog through it all.
That, or entrust whoever is doing the picking and choosing to present a reasonable accurate image of the whole flow.
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But you are presenting this as it is news. And 2chan and 4chan are well known for troll and racist remarks and do not represent any country as a whole. The fact that so much of it is anonymous unlike Twitter and Facebook makes it very easy for people to write whatever they want irregardless of anything. 4chan is well known for it’s hate and slanderous postings. So if 2chan is the same, then I stand by it’s irresponsible to use that as a source for Japanese responses to anything.
Just because a Prime Minister likes something doesn’t make it right.
Basically your post proves the fact that a lot of bloggers are acting like news reporters and people aren’t told the truth that they aren’t actually providing all the facts, just their opinions. I say news because in the About US for this site they state the posts here are “blog-based reservoir of information, entertainment, and news”. Reporting something that happened is news reporting. You may say you aren’t reporting news, but you are. Writing about an actual event that happened, communicating a current event, that is reporting news.
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JHZ:
2channel (not “2chan”) has been mentioned many times before on this site and many other Japan blogs. A great deal of this site’s readership has probably had some experience with it.
I feel no obligation whatsoever to force feed readers who can’t figure out what they should take seriously.
I expect that most of the readers here are smart enough not to judge an entire country based on what a few netizens wrote on an internet forum.
Many posts, like this one, share a news article and then provide other information that is more of entertainment value.
This is an entertainment/news site. Most posts here focus on the weird, ridiculous, or outrageous things. If you want to get dry and serious news reports, I suggest you check a newspaper.
P.S. irregardless?
helical:
You’re right. There is a certain risk in my picking up comments that were featured on Itai News.
Since you’ve brought up a good point, the next time I use Itai News as a source, I will probably skim the actual 2ch thread and possibly take some comments that the Itai blogger didn’t pick up.
Have you ever checked hatena book mark ?
http://b.hatena.ne.jp/
This site is much more liberal compared to 2channel.
I think it’s better to check both side of Japanese netizens.
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I do not oppose citing comments from 2ch nor using it as a source of information, but I think some explanations might be required as 2ch is a place of diverse people and interests.
“Itai News” from where James picked up some of comments is actually a summary blog site of a 2ch boards, “Itai News+”. Hence, at least, two persons are involved in the filtering process.
The above site itself is not intended to be a summary site of comments to general news but focuses on little more wacky, silly, and worthless news. The Japanese word “itai” usually means “painful”, but in “Itai News” it is supposed to be a slang word. According to the definition of an online dictionary “The Dictionary of Japanese Slang Words“:
More detailed explanation is given there, but I will not translat it. A typical usage of this slang word is, “itai-ko”, which means a (young) person who is often awkward and is characterized by his/her frequent misguided or irrelevant speech and action. That Australian man might be seriously “itai-ko” for various reasons.
In my opinion, it is not a problem as long as everyone here understand backgrounds and a prerequisite knowledge.
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Hopefully the guy will get the book thrown at him.
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How much is mygengo paying you?
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Nothing. They just gave me some free points to use on their site.
I could translate these comments myself, but I am interested in testing their quick online translation system.
Fair enough.
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How about testing it on some more useful content? Forum comments are hardly news article material.
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@kiw
And I couldn’t disagree with you more!
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There sure is racism everywhere in the world, however I have been hearing quite a lot of race motivated violence coming from Australia recently, from the race riot in Sydney, to Indians getting attacked and now this. Australia also has a notorious track record for its treatment of refugees which is way below par.
I thought Australia was one of the easiest countries to lead a quality life. It has a good economy, lots of breath taking beaches and nature. Hardly any poverty so why is it that they just can´t be happy Australians?
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Why do they hide the murderer’s face and show his parents faces?
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Ah, the other day, Japan was considered and promptly judged a shallow and bigoted country for remarks against Serena Williams in this blog. Now this Jap (poor Filipino in actuality) was killed due to obvious anti-JP racism. What do the Gaijins have to say? i guess it’s the same old answer: Racism is everywhere so we ain’t all bad…
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Everyone is harsh with others and tolerant with themselves.
これで通じるかいな?
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変な関西弁よりは通じるかとw
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Exactly.
General rule of thumb is, if even ONE Japanese person DARE say or do anything considered ‘racist,’ then it is fair game to indict the entire nation and its people.
BUT, if a person of any other race, ethnicity, or country commits, states, or in any way acts in a racist manner, then by gosh there are racists everywhere, one bad apple doesn’t ruin the bunch, etc. etc. etc.
Double standards always and forever my friends.
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>Now this Jap (poor Filipino in actuality) was killed due to obvious
>anti-JP racism. What do the Gaijins have to say? i guess it’s the
>same old answer: Racism is everywhere so we ain’t all bad…
This is so ture.
Thank you japanobserver and HamachiMan for voicing reason! Of all these hypocritical gaijins here, you two guys are clearly exceptions.
To all you fuckers still don’t get it,
Perhaps we 日本人 should start carrying baseball bats for smashing your thick gaijin heads one by one in public like racist Australia. Then you would finally realize how lucky you guys are living in peaceful non-racist 日本.
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Yes, of course, go to violence and generalizations. The choice of intelligent people everywhere.
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ヒドイハシダナー
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アラマ、「ナ」ガヌケテモウタw
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“F–k off back to Japan.ya Jap’ Mate, he is Japanese and he deserves it,”
oh..i am very sad..what did japanese do to deserve this?
ugly white barbarian..
this is true racism.
in western countries,a lot of japanese(asian) have been violent harassment by white racist.
what isclear is that this nauseating crime never happen in Japan.
I hope that the world becomes without distinction like peace country of Japan.
poor Mr.Magno Alvarado… rest in peace.
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“Never” is a pretty strong word, but I do think it’s noteworthy that, for all the racist overtones that Japan is accused of having, I have not heard of any instance of a clearly racially motivated physical violence in Japan in the past years that I’ve been paying attention to the news.
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If I recall there was that one time a student or someone young of Korean ancestry was actually assaulted or something along those lines not too long ago in Japan.
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In mid 90’s, there were several reports that school girls of Korean ancestry wearing their ethnical costume had been attacked and their clothes were torn. A Wikipedia entry argue on this issue.
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Please avoid victimization oh, feel sorry for us attitude. Japan and its citizens needs to reassert itself and show that this kind of crime (if it did happen to a Japanese) will not be tolerated with. I think the foreign community loves to take swipes and attack Japan frequently (especially the media cnn *cough*) because they know for certain there will be little to no consequence. Try that with China, CNN called Chinese goons and thugs and the whole Chinese community was angered. Japan is too passive and this very weakness provides a magnet for gaijin criticism.
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//in western countries,a lot of japanese(asian) have been violent harassment by white racist.//
I’m Asian by race and I have been living in Canada since high school. I never experienced any very serious racism against white people.
If I were to live in America or Australia, I wouldn’t survive for 2 years. Also it’s interesting to see that there has been many Japanese perma-residents in Ontario.
For Japanese, you can always love Canada instead.
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Why do you thank you couldn’t survive in America for 2 years? If the United States is so bad why do so many Asian emigrate there. My brother is half Korean and has had very few problems. He has had less probs. in the US. than I have had here.
Canada is not quite the Utopia you depict. There have been growing racial tension there with the influx of Chinese.
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I first learned English in America for 2 years and I have Australia-living relatives complaining so much that they are going to move to Canada.
Honestly from my experience Canada is always better than USA no matter what.
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That is a very well thought out opinion.
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Why does this always seem to happen in Australia?
I’ve never heard of any cases of Anti-Japanese violence in any other Anglo country.
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A Japanese kid was almost beaten to death in New Zealand not long ago. If that counts as an anglo country.
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Yes it does. But that was not so much racially-motivated (ie a “hatred of Japs for being Japs” type of idea) but a hatred of Japanese whaling that got twisted up.
Australia has historically been a *very* white place. The natives were pushed into the desert and ignored, and up until a few decades ago you had to be white to immigrate. Cronulla was also the place where those riots were a few years ago, so is perhaps not the most tolerant and inclusive of places.
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“Australia has historically been a *very* white place.”
Good point. I have long thought that one of possible reasons for the differences in the paths white Australians and white New Zealanders took was that the Maori were a hell of a lot better at kicking ass and taking names than the Australian Aboriginal peoples were. Perhaps that pushed the New Zealanders to “reach a mutually agreeable settlement” with the natives.
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Yeah, they were. When the first European explorer reached NZ, he wasn’t even able to land–the locals came out and killed four of his men instead.
Also, by the time the British Crown came around to NZ, it was starting to realise its errors in dealing with native peoples and wanted to try a more equitable settlement, which, even if it didn’t work out as well in practice, was a hell of an improvement on reservations or random slaughter or the like.
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Overthinker, do you not think that this incident was also spurred on (of course by substance abuse at the base level) by the same anti-whaling rhetoric that provoked the attack in NZ? Australia and in particular Sydney has a HUGE Asian population,but few Japanese..for him to single out ‘Jap’ points to a political reason (especially as he was obviously too thick to even differentiate between Japanese and other Asians)
Aboriginals pushed into the desert? No,not really mate..and let us not pretend that the Maori were treated differently..a great number died from diseased blankets given to them when they were pushed away from their traditional lives.
The Aboriginals were much more scattered and had a much larger group of tribes with different languages,unlike the Maori who were more homogeneous..and many aboriginals did fight back..especially in QLD.
I do agree with you that the Colonial govt. changed their approach in NZ.
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Daz. I do not know. It has not, as far as I know, been made specific, so I cannot comment. In the NZ case it was made specific.
“a great number died from diseased blankets given to them when they were pushed away from their traditional lives.”
Is this like that similar stories about the American Indians that have been shown as either false or genuine mistakes?
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It is believed that there is a sort of media blackout about attacks on foreigners in Australia and New Zealand, because they rely heavily on tourism as a source of foreign cash. Some bloggers write that official media will not report that victim of crime has been foreigner, except for serious cases. Example, Indian student fate got attention, because it was widely reported in India.
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Mr.USA
Please read this story about Vincent Chin
whethere you consider U.S. Anglo country or not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Chin
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I’ll tell you a story about my ride on the train this morning. I boarded the train with my sister and wife, and sat down. A man came and sat near us. He said hello. We ignored him. He tried again and we kept ignoring him. He then started swearing and abusing us. He threatened to smash my face into the back of the seat in front of me and demanded I say hello when he says it to me. We moved to another carriage, found the train’s guard and reported the abusive passenger. He was told to leave the train a few stations later.
Okay, now I’ll give you some more details.
This is in Australia. I am a White Australian. My sister is too. My wife is Japanese. The man was Aborginal. He came and sat near us and spoke to us, not because he was friendly, but because he was intoxicated and hostile. He accused us of ignoring him because he was black. We were ignoring him because you ignore the occasional person who is like that on the train (e.g. drunk, drugged, begging for change, or have mental problems).
The point I would like to make is that while there are race-related aspects to both the murder this blog article has discussed and my encounter on the train this morning, I don’t think it is the core issue. Were people in each of these incidents prejudiced? Apparently so. They were also intoxicated and violent, or prone to it.
It is sad that these incidents occur. It is also sad and frustrating that it suddenly becomes a matter of an Australian killed someone he thought was Japanese because of that, or an Aboriginal man threatened a White Australian.
Unfortunately, there are troubled ‘toorima’ wherever there are people. In these cases, it appears race (as a social construct) set them off, in addition to drink. Are not others set off by age, gender, or some another marker?
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What a disgusting country.It seems like Australia is a particularly racist place. Is the government not doing anything?
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Yes, it’s deplorable how his man is being awarded a medal and honoured by the government. In any normal country he would be arrested and jailed.
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What’s scary is that there were a few witnesses and they didn’t stop this guy from beating a 67 year old man to death.
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Yeah, from the comments I saw regarding the bear maul coverage I thought that the brave westerners would step in, I’m sure a drunk 23 year old guy isn’t stronger or scarier than a bear.
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To me, the saddest thing is that people who call others racists are not aware of how racistic they are. Certainly many Japanese are racistic too, so are 2channel people.
And I wonder why Japan Probe is filled with so many racism related articles and they draw so much more attentions than new s of any other kinds. Well, I am one of them too, who pay more attention to them.
I have certainly become race-sensitive a lot since I moved to U.S. as many people here do not treat Asians who speak English with heavy accent like me very well.
I guess some Gaijins in Japan become race sensitive too by living in Japan as a minority.
I think we might get a little too obsessive about this subject, but it might be justifiable as it affects our identity issues so much.
Before I came to U.S., I believed I could make friends with anybody. Boy, I was wrong.
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These articles serve as a sad reminder that things like this are out there and every country has some kind of racist issue. However, what brings my blood to a boil is when people can so freely criticize another and accuse a nation of rampant racism when they in fact are lightning fast in shunning off any responsibility on themselves. Gaijins, particularly Australians quickly call Japanese whale munching Japs etc., while when stuff like this happens, they say “oh, wait, we’re all not like that.” I guess in the end this double standard is unavoidable, which is kind of a sad realization.
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I agree.
Unfortunately we do have lots of double standards.
We tend to criticise others than ourselves, and certainly have a tendency to put stereo typing labels on others, never on ourselves.
Sadly that’s what we are, a part of human nature because we have to put ourselves first in order to survive.
But I think at least people should be more aware of it to control our ego and selfish behaviors.
And the difficult thing to deal with is that we are very complexed beings.
White people in U.S. have been much more educated about this issues than anybody else by getting so much protests from Blacks for a long time. They cetainly know how to behave when they have to deal with others. But that does not mean they are much less racistic than others unfortunately.
And other people in U.S. think they are better than other minorities knowing the top of the hierarchy is mosdef White.
A guy who lives next door to you might looks like a great son to his mother or great dad to his kids, and a good neighbor to you. But still he could be a bigot.
I know I can be racistic sometimes too.
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I agree with Comment by Au with this situation. I don’t think that Australian is a racist country. I believe the major problem that Australia has been its inability to quell the culture of substance abuse and violence while under the influence.
I’m white European Australian and I’m marrying a Japanese girl. I love Japan I love its culture and its people and there are a lot of people in Australia who feel the same way. There have been many cases of Racism in other countries in the last few years. But with these instances I do not label the entire country as being racist.
I do not believe that the majority of Australians are racist. We have a higher number of ethnic groups and immigrants then do most countries including Japan and we give citizenship and the right to vote to long-term immigrants unlike Japan currently does (I’m aware that this is changing). I’m hoping that this example of one person’s actions does not give a long-term negative view of Australia to anyone who has one the moment. That said for the defense, I deeply feel shame for what has happened and I hope that James of Illawong and anyone else who does something like this is made and example of and receives the punishment they deserves.
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While I think many Australians are not racists, I think Australia is clearly more racist than other countries.
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Even thought I have traveled to a lot I can not adequately compare Australia with other countries unfortunately and I do not think I have the right to with my limited personal experience. There are some racist people in Australia and it has been a problem. But I still believe we are not as racist as the comments made previously by commenters in this article.
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Probably the racists in Australia are just more violent and macho than the racists in some other countries.
Australia is a relatively safe, tolerant and equal-opportunity society.
I’m Italian-Australian.
I’ve been called racist names while living in Australia, but I’ve been rejected from renting an apartment based on xenophobia while living in Japan. Which is worse?
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“I do not believe that the majority of Australians are racist. ”
I agree and I don’t think Australia is a racist country.
“we give citizenship and the right to vote to long-term immigrants ”
As for the right to vote, I think the followings are more accurate pictures.
Australia
(CN member) National voting rights were granted to Commonwealth citizens from 1960 to 1984.[2] In 1984, 1947 legislation which had allowed non-citizen voting was repealed, but voters registered before 1984 retained their voting rights.
(Right of foreigners to vote Wikipedia)
Australia
Local level // Regional Level natonal Level
right to・ Eligibility//right to・Eligibility//right to・ Eligibility
vote vote vote
CL/CT ・CL/CT // CL CL //CL・ ー
CL =Electoral rights for citizens of certain countries on the basis of a colonial links in the past;
CT = Electoral rights in certain territories (region, province, or municipality);
(Electoral rights for foreign nationals:
a comparative overview of regulations in 36 countries
Harald Waldrauch February 2003,)
オーストラリア
英連邦諸国
国政の選挙権は1984年1月25日の時点で選挙人名簿に登録されている英連邦市民。
地方の選挙権は特定の期日(州により異なる)時点で選挙人名簿に登録されている英連邦市民。地方の被選挙権は西オーストラリア州など一部の州で付与されている。
その他
・南オーストラリア州
→1か月以上の居住。
・ 南オーストラリア州、タスマニア州及びヴィクトリア州
→州内に不動産を所有している州外居住者。
(外国人参政権をめぐる論点
佐藤 令)
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It is inherently immature to label a country as a racist nation with one act of racism.
From when is it acceptable to put a label on someone in such a way?
You could say the same about Japanese people based on comments above and for their actions in WW2 and the widely accepted view that Japan is a xenophobic country which you could say was based on racist views believing that Japan is a superior country.
Is it true that all Americans have guns and go on crazy rampages in schools? No, that is not a fair judgement, in the same way is it fair in this case.
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posting a news story like this in comparison to the opinions of ‘netizens’ is not really a responsible formula for commentary.
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As I sense danger of flamewar, I preclear the facts.
Japan won the racism title.
Japan won the xenophobia title.
Japan won the pervert title.
Japan won the weirdo title.
Japan won the bigot title.
Japan won the sexist title.
…anything more?
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This is a senseless and sad end for Mr. Alvarado, through no fault of his own. Some posters here have been level headed enough to state it: you cannot ascribe and cast aspersions on an entire nation through the actions of a few — that applies for every country and its people, Japanese, Australian, Canadian etc. Learn to see the individual before you rather than some crude, caricaturized misrepresentation; some of you (both Japanese and foreign (to Japan) born) posters seem so intelligent, so have more common sense. Disgusting and despicable acts like this in any country need to be spoken out against … first and foremost by those “native sons”.
P.S. As a former immigrant and now a Canadian citizen, as much as I may appreciate Canada overall it’s misleading to potray it as a paragon of multicultural virtue. There are problems there as well, though probably less magnified than in other countries simply because of the relatively small population.
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Your last should read
Note: Aust-Korea is a pejorative slang term used against Australia/Koreans. It combines the names of Australia and Korea.
and not
Note: Aust-Korea is a pejorative slang term used against Australia/Australians. It combines the names of Australia and Korea.
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No, James’ desciption is correct.
On 2ch, the often hysterical and irrational tone of anti-Japanese rhetoric in Korea is regarded as plain fact and common knowledge, and is of course regarded with contempt and disdain.
With the recent increase in radical anti-Japanese remarks by Australia centered around but not limited to whaling issues, the people of 2ch began regarding Australia as being cast from the same mold as Korea. And thus the word “Aust-Korea” joined the vast ranks of 2ch jargon.
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It’s a terrible crime, but to say it’s isolated to Australia is ridiculous.
US Hate Crime Stats.
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/table_01.htm
Canada Hate Crime Stats.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85f0033m/85f0033m2008017-eng.pdf
Story from NZ
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/271717
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Well done Yamato,you hit the nail on the head.There are many documented cases of racism in Japan too.
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Hope they lock this jerk up and throw away the key for life. Is that his dear mother holding his picture in the photo? Does she want her loving son released?
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This was a truly disgusting incident that highlights the existence in Australian society of a section of poorly-educated, alcoholic, violent, racist white yobs, not that the entire population is racist as some here have deemed fit to generalise. I’m guessing that most of those who describe Australia as a whole as racist are relying on a stereotype of the white Australian; or are they categorising Australians of all ethnic backgrounds as racist purely on the basis of their current nationality?
By the way, if we’re all looking at Australia in a fair and balanced manner, you might have noticed that the Broome Council has seen the error of its ways:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20091015a4.html
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Who the hell cares whether the the folks at Broome see the error of their ways. They severed the connection so why bother picking up the pieces which they’ve already shattered. Ah wait, the moron locals finally got off its high horse after realizing that dumping ties will negatively affect its economy (tourism) so it has to reverse its decision huh? I read that Australians in the area are vandalizing/damaging tombstones of Japanese anyways. BTW, since Australians love the marine animals so damn much, they should open an embassy for them and scrap the barbaric Japanese relations. Boy am I glad that Japanese tourism to Australia is plummeting. If Broome and the other citizens of Aust. want isolation from JP, let them have it.
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Who the hell cares? Well, not you, obviously, nor anyone else who is content to reduce a population diverse in ethnicity and opinion into a broad generalisation rather than bother with facts. But here are some people who do care, residents of Broome who were as disgusted as your good self that their local council yielded to pressure from the usual suspects and took that vote to threaten to sever links with Taiji, just as they were disgusted with the vandalism of graves in the Japanese cemetery.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=127329496914
You may have a point with the tourism angle, but it might just be possible that the council reversed their decision and resolved to apologise to Taiji due to pressure from townspeople such as these.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/14/2713734.htm?site=news
Sometimes there are more sides to an issue than we think we know.
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JP should have thumb-up&down function like they have in YT. This japanobserver’s post won 100000thumbs up from me. Thank you japanobserver!
I don’t know about Australian counter part, but Taiji is small fishing village. They really don’t need international ties like this. Considering gaijin media hysteria on their way of life recently, they wouldn’t care less about getting severed from this false international sisterhood.
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One racist, murdering piece of trash does not an entire nation make. Nor does a small minority of racist landlords.
I have lived in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, the UK, Australia, Japan, and am from the USA. In all places I met people who are very friendly, and others who were not worth a second conversation because of their ignorance.
In Puerto Rico I saw dark skinned Puerto Ricans continually discriminated against. In Mexico, light skin women were treated better than women of obvious Aztec and Inca heritage. In Saudi Arabia I had to pay an extra 5% tax because I am not Muslim. In Kenya a Masai man was shot and killed about 50 feet in front of me by a rival tribal leader.
Racism and discrimination are alive and well in every nation. We need to realize you cannot legislate away ignorance and stupidity. People will still hate “them” because they are not “us”. It comes down to education and exposure to other cultures. Legislation is good to make “us” feel like we have done “something”, but in the end it is really NOTHING. Until, of course we stop seeing “them” and see a human being.
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I don’t know if the pejorative slang is all that fair given that, from a race perspective, a Korean’s bark is a lot worse than it’s bite.
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So what Koreans got do with this story?
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What is the actual Japanese term translated as “Aust-Korean”?
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オーストコリア人
Thank you, James. Strange appellation. Do Japanese netizens sometimes use the Katakana spelling コリア in making negative comments about Korea?
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It’s more likely that it worked better as a pun.
オーストラリア人 – Australian
オーストコリア人 – Aust-Korean
It’s the same number of letters with only one being different.
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I don’t dislike Australian. but, I don’t like a barbarous act.
Some Australian broke the Japanese flag.
It is the same as the South Korean. This is Aust-Korean’s reason.
The Japanese doesn’t break the national flag of other countries. No one.
We think, they just doesn’t like Japan.
Sorry, I can’t speak English well…
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