CANBERRA, May 22 (Xinhua) -- A Jewish leader in South Australia has called for stronger hate crime laws, after a series of pro-Nazi posters and stickers appearing in Adelaide, the state's capital city.
University campuses and an Adelaide synagogue have been subjected to a wave of anti-Sematic material which features images of swastikas, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and derogatory depictions of Jewish people.
Chairman of the Jewish Community Council of South Australia Norman Schueler said on Tuesday that a sign outside a local synagogue was replaced with racist posters to mark the occasion of Hitler's birthday on April 20.
Schueler said the posters were put up by a neo-Nazi group called Antipodean Resistance, which was founded in 2016.
Current Australian laws prevent vilification based on race, ethnicity or religion, however, Schueler said the punishments are not severe enough to deter behavior.
"A very strong concern is that our laws regarding incitement to violence... are not adequate to prosecute. We may have laws on the statute books but they don't seem to be strong enough," Schueler told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Tuesday morning.
Jordan Mumford, president of the University of South Australia's Student Association, told the ABC on Tuesday that incidents of anti-Semitism on campus have ramped up over the past few weeks.
"Certainly we've seen on all four of our metropolitan campuses stickers and posters with Nazi imagery and racist slogans," Mumford said.
"I would like to think, given university students are pursuing higher education, they wouldn't gravitate towards these intolerant views."
