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CANBERRA- Reports of brutal bashings in "fight clubs" at elite colleges - filmed and broadcast on the internet - have raised new alarm over bullying and violence in Australia's schoolyards.
Pictures taken from the internet and published in the Australian yesterday showed a student being kicked as he lay on the ground in one of the bare-knuckled brawls organised for the entertainment of other youths and internet viewers.
The footage was posted on the YouTube website but has since been removed.
The Australian said the fights, involving students at exclusive Melbourne schools such as Scotch and Xavier colleges but also extending at times to state schools, were arranged every few months, usually on Friday and Saturday nights.
This follows an alarming rise in reported schoolyard bashings and bullying and new efforts by state and territory governments to clamp down on the perpetrators, some of whom have been identified from the internet and expelled.
In Canberra, the Australian Capital Territory Government launched tough new anti-bullying measures - including mandatory reporting and an audit of individual schools' anti-bullying policies - following repeated schoolyard violence.
Students, two of them teenage girls, have been seriously beaten in attacks filmed on mobile phones and posted on the internet.
In the latest published incident, internet footage showed one Scotch College student beating another to the ground as about 20 spectators yelled "fight" and "get the terrorist". The Australian said the footage was the second in as many months to emerge and followed another "fight club" film showing students from Xavier College being bullied into fighting.
It said one student had said that "fight clubs" between teenagers attending elite schools in Melbourne's eastern suburbs were arranged every few months and had also been arranged with students from state schools.
