Collaboration between the eSafety Commissioner and the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has resulted in a video highlighting support for victims of cyber abuse, along with new multilingual resources.
AHRC Commissioner for Race Discrimination, Chin Tan said that in February this year the Commission recorded more complaints under the Racial Discrimination Act than at any time over the previous 12 months.
“While the rate of racism complaints since then has been within the usual range, 30 per cent of all racial discrimination complaints made to the AHRC since the start of February have been related to COVID-19,” Mr Tan said.
“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, there have been persistent reports of racist abuse and discrimination against people of Chinese and other Asian backgrounds.”
He welcomed the collaboration with eSafety “because it means people will know there is support available if these harmful attacks happen online”.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said her organisation stood ready to provide support and advice to victims of cyber abuse.
“In the era of COVID-19, during which some individuals may find themselves the targets of this type of behaviour on the basis of their race, we want to make sure our resources are accessible to all,” Ms Inman Grant said.
“Our advice to victims of cyber abuse is now available in Arabic, Persian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Tagalog, Hindi, Vietnamese, Spanish, Tamil, Punjabi, Thai and Korean.”
She said constant vigilance was required to condemn and address racism, whether online or off.
“Australia prides itself on being a safe and welcoming country that addresses issues of racism and takes each racist incident seriously,” Ms Inman Grant said.
The new 2:30 minute video explaining cyber abuse and available remedies can be found on the eSafety website at this PS News link. Note the video has sound.
