2 Arrested in Australia Over Racist Tirade Caught on Video

Detectives in Australia are questioning two people over a racist tirade filmed on a train in Brisbane and posted online.

In the five-minute video, which went viral after being posted online, a young man is seen swearing and hurling racial abuse at a Queensland Rail train guard of African descent who asked him to take his feet off the seats.

"Learn some f*****g English because this is Australia, because I can't understand you," the man is heard saying. "Do you even have citizenship?"

When another rail offer intervenes, the young man calls him a "dumb white dog". Other passengers eventually step in and tell the man to get off the train but he refuses to comply.

"I'll sit on this train for hours if I have to, I'll hold everyone up – I really don't care," he says, before continuing to hurl racial abuse and confront other passengers.

Two males, aged 17 and 18, were arrested and are due to appear in court on Monday, according to the Mirror.

Un-Australian

The footage was condemned by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who told reporters in Brisbane that the comments were "deplorable".

"I think it's un-Australian to abuse people in a public place just because you don't like the way they look, or you don't like the way they dress, or you make assumptions about what they believe," he said.

The Queensland State Premier Campbell Newman praised the security's guard's "dignity and aplomb", and said he showed "admirable restraint".

After the footage went viral, a Facebook user purporting to be the man shown in the video left a comment saying: "I was just drunk, couldn't remember shit so stop over reacting, but I am proud to be white!"

Apology

Several hours later, the poster added: "I'm really sorry to everyone that was affected by the video, I really cannot remember anything out of all honesty, the post made before was someone else. I know this is no excuse but can you all see from my point of view that I was a f*****g idiot and I'm really sorry."

The incident is the latest in a series of racist outbursts caught on film on Australian public transport. In July, a woman was filmed abusing two people on a train in Sydney and making racist gestures at an Asian woman.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation newsreader Jeremy Fernandez, who has a Malaysian background, wrote last year of being racially abused in front of his young daughter by a woman on a bus in Sydney who told him to go back to his "own country".

In November 2012, a French tourist on a Melbourne bus was threatened with having her breasts cut off and told to "speak English or die".