MELBOURNE: An Indian-origin man who was assaulted by a group of teenagers in Australia in an alleged hate attack has said that the racial mood is changing in the country and it could stem from the "Trump effect".
Li Max Joy, who is pursuing a nursing course and working as a part time taxi driver in North Hobart in Tasmania, alleged that five people including a girl hurled racial abuses like "you bloody black Indians" at him and assaulted him up at the McDonald's restaurant.
The 33-year-old who hails from Kerala said the increasing racial hostility could stem from "the Donald Trump effect", the Advertiser newspaper reported.
"The racial mood is definitely changing. It is continuous now. Many other drivers have been abused but not everyone reports it to the police," he said.
Joy said that he has been living in Hobart for eight years with his family and also narrated another such incident that happened with him a week ago.
"Last week in Glenorchy, I was waiting for a fare when a primary-school aged boy put water in his mouth and then came over to the car window and spat it out on me," Joy said.
On March 20, an Indian-origin Catholic priest was stabbed in the neck at a church in Melbourne by a man who called him unqualified to say mass as he was an Indian.
Since Donald Trump won the Presidential election, there has been a dramatic uptick in hate crimes and racist incidents in the US.
Last month, a 32-year-old Indian engineer was killed andanother Indian man was injured after a Navy veteran yelling "get out of my country" and "terrorist" opened fire on them at a bar in Kansas City in an apparent racially motivated hate crime.