Melbourne does not have an African gang problem – it has a violence against women problem – and it’s deplorable
Another vibrant, talented young woman died recently at the hands of young men. Laa Chol was at a party with friends, like many young people over the weekend. Her life ended as she attempted to diffuse a situation where uninvited, or unwanted, guests had overstayed their welcome. But this is a situation that happens all the time – all of us can remember our teenage years and being at parties where ‘gate-crashers’ had to be asked to leave. Some of us may have witnessed fights and police involvement but very few of us will have been at a female-only party where the gate-crashers were young men and it resulted in the stabbing death of a woman. From what I can glean from media reports, the group of people who were supposed to be at the party were women and the gate-crashers were men. So I was confused as to why the media’s reporting of this focused more of the race of persons involved over another, at least to me, salient fact: why a group of teenage boys and...