WATCH: Global’s Allison Vuchnich brings you the incident onboard a Sydney train that’s gone viral
TORONTO – An Australian woman’s passionate outburst has gone viral after she was filmed coming to the defence of a Muslim couple being harassed on a Sydney train.
Now the woman at the heart of the video is speaking out to local media – while the couple is taking to social media to thank her for coming to their aid.
Twenty-three-year-old Stacey Eden told the Daily Mail in Australia she was riding the Airport Line train at around 1:40 p.m. local time on Wednesday when she noticed a middle-aged woman verbally harassing a Muslim couple sitting across from her.
Eden admits she turned on her cellphone to record the incident before deciding to intervene herself.
“So I sat there for a good 10 minutes before I started recording this, while I listened to this woman bad mouth Muslims and call the lady sitting opposite me an ISIS supporter because she wore a scarf, then she told me to go join ISIS because I was sticking up for her,” Eden wrote after posting the video to her Facebook page.
“She was saying some pretty horrible and hurtful things before I spoke up then as soon as I started defending them, she stopped.”
A heated verbal exchange follows between the two women, as Eden accuses the woman of bullying the Muslim passengers.
“She wears it for herself, okay? She wears it because she wants to be modest with her body, not because of people like you who are going to sit there and disrespect her,” Eden is heard shouting in the video.
The unidentified woman replied by mentioning last year’s Martin Place siege, and the attack on a university in Kenya by Muslim extremists that claimed 148 lives.
“What’s that got to do with this poor lady? That is not her doing it, that is a minority of people not a majority of people, okay? Have some respect,” Eden replies.
The video has exploded in popularity since being posted to Eden’s facebook, generating thousands of views, over 1000 shares, and getting picked up by a variety of Australian media outlets.
Eden, a resident of the Mascot suburb of Sydney, explained why she came to the defense of the couple in a radio interview Thursday.
“I just felt so bad for them because they seemed to come across as so intimidated from what the woman was saying they couldn’t even say anything for themselves,” Eden told Australian radio host Ben Fordham.
Eden says she even stayed on the train past her stop in order to make sure the woman wouldn’t continue to harass the Muslin couple.
“Please don’t take this as a representation of all of us, because we’re not all like that,” Eden says she told the husband and wife as they disembarked the train at Sydney International Airport.
Eden has been widely praised since the video exploded in popularity two days ago.
“She is a reflection of ‘Team Humanity’ and we hope that her actions inspire others to stand up against racial or religious vilification,” Islamophobia Register Australia said in a press release.
Another benefit of the video going viral is the couple being subjected to the attack were able to come forward, identify themselves, and thank Eden for coming to their aid.
Hafeez Ahmed Bhatti, a Pakistani man now residing in Brisbane, originally complained of the incident on his Facebook page, saying he had been the victim of racism “by an old Christian lady.”
Once the story got picked up by local media outlets, he was able to contact Ms. Eden to thank her personally.
“God bless Stacey Eden who support us,” he wrote in a later post on his Facebook page.
Global News reached out to Eden and Bhatti for comment, but have not heard back as of this writing.
Comments