KEY POINTS:
Sunny Nelson celebrates "Race Unity Day" tomorrow.
Yet for some who have made their home in the South Island city of just under 49,000, it has been anything but unified.
Three Korean teenagers studying at Nelson College are nursing wounds after being attacked last weekend while outside a dairy. They were called "monkeys" and told to go home.
Two shaven-head men face assault charges in the Nelson District Court.
Nelson College headmaster Gary O'Shea said the attack had shocked everyone. While Asian and Polynesian students at the college occasionally faced verbal abuse, this was a "new level of hatred".
One of the boys required stitches in his mouth after being hit around the head and the others had various "bumps and bruises", Mr O'Shea said.
"While it was traumatic, they seem to have dealt with it really well."
It is not the first case of racial violence in the Nelson area.
Last year Ross Mervyn Bishop, 17, was jailed after kicking a man to the ground, demanding money and "Indian food", while the year before Gemma Whitwell, 18, was jailed for her part in repeatedly harassing, assaulting and throwing the contents of a rubbish bin over a 17-year-old student of Chinese descent.
These and other racially-motivated incidents prompted Nelson police to call a public meeting to confront the issue in 2005.
The extreme right-wing National Front claims the racial tensions are an inevitable byproduct of the growing ethnic diversity in Nelson. National director Sid Wilson called the Race Unity Day a "sick joke".
Inspector Brian McGurk, head of the Nelson police, said he did hear reports of abuse directed at ethnic minorities in the city, but maintains racial violence in Nelson is a "rare and infrequent occurrence".
It was only because city leaders talked openly about such incidents that it drew so much attention, Mr McGurk said.
He pointed out that police had targeted the people responsible for racial violence and abuse in the town.
"Members of the various communities in Nelson should have confidence in police that these sorts of issues are taken very seriously."
Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres also defended Nelson's reputation, saying it had a small minority of racists prepared to engage in violence like any other town or city in New Zealand.
"One of the reasons you hear about these things in Nelson is that police there have been pro-active in publicising these things. You can't judge a whole city on a small number of people who are both racist and violent."
Claire Nichols, of the Nelson Multi-Ethnic Council, considers the city a "really tolerant community".
"When these things happen, as a community we stand up and say it is unacceptable. We have been more pro-active and we do get more media attention because of that."
