Racial attacks on Chinese students linked to skinheads

Three people charged in the recent beatings of Chinese university students in Saint John, N.B. claim to have ties to a skinhead organization.

Police have charged the three — two young offenders, 15 and 17, and a 19 year-old man — in connection with two recent incidents in which Chinese students at the University of New Brunswick’s Saint John campus were beaten with baseball bats and sticks.

“They were beaten with blunt instruments, a stick or a bat or something. There’s been a number of weapons recovered. In one particular case, it was a bat. In the other case it was a stick of some type,” said Insp. Darrell Scribner of the Saint John Police Force criminal investigation division.

The attacks were racially motivated, Scribner said. More charges are pending against the three and other suspects, and those could include charges under hate crimes legislation.

“There’s no section of the (Criminal) Code we’re not going to look at. … So if, in fact, the case facts cover any aspect of hate crime we would certainly work with the Crown prosecutors to put forward whatever charges are appropriate at the end of the day,” Scribner said.

“I expect that there’ll be other people questioned with regard to this and I expect there will be additional charges,” Scribner said.

He couldn’t say if the three belong to a street gang, but that police are “concerned about what these three individuals have told us concerning their involvements here and their mindsets.”

When asked if they are skinheads, Scribner said “they claim that they have an alliance to an organization like that.”

The assaults, which left the two victims with cuts and bruises, occurred July 28 and Aug. 9 in an off-campus area that is home to mostly foreign students.

During the same period, there were also other incidents involving vandalism and graffiti in the same neighbourhood, Scribner said.

“My understanding is it said something to the effect of ‘Gooks go home’,” he said.

Scribner said assaults against foreign students are rare in Saint John.

“Extremely out of the ordinary. The relationships are very good. It’s an anomaly to have something like this,” Scribner said.

Since 1999, the university has focused on attracting international students, in particular from China. In that time, incidents like these have been very rare, said Dan Tanaka, communications manager at the Saint John campus of UNB, where 20 per cent of the university’s 3,000 students are Chinese.

The last, two years ago, involved eggs thrown at foreign students in the same neighbourhood.

He said the recent incidents likely won’t deter international students from attending the UNB, but they did cause great concern for university staff and students.

“We’re obviously concerned any time there is an attack on any of our students, but by nature of the police believing these to be racially motivated, it is more concerning to us,”Tanaka said.

The university is between semesters at the moment, so there are comparatively few people on campus. But many international students don’t return home over the summer because of the cost of travel, Tanaka said. The students who were attacked were in that situation.