Chinese-Australian Crispian Chan was just eight-years-old when his family’s Chinese restaurant was firebombed in a series of targeted race-based attacks by neo-Nazis in Perth during the 1980s.
Thirty-five years on, most of us have never heard about these terrorist attacks, even though they were carried out by some of the most prolific terrorists Australia has ever seen.
Now, Chan goes on a deeply personal journey to investigate what really happened after his family’s restaurant went up in flames in the ABC’s new season of the Unravel True Crime Podcast – Firebomb.
He has teamed up with ABC reporter Alex Mann, and together they travel the country searching for answers.
“The idea of neo-Nazis roaming the streets of Perth in the 80s was such an absurd concept.“
“But yet at the same time, right now, we’re seeing on the streets of Melbourne, Nazis walking around seig hailing and I can’t help but wonder, you know, what have we forgotten from that period in the 80s? What haven’t we learned that we are seeing the repeat of this happening again?“
In this episode of The Briefing, Crispian chats to Tom Tilley about how the attack impacted the Chan family, and why he went in search of the perpetrators almost 40 years later.