A Fiji-Indian immigrant was the victim of a racial attack during his second week at a Christchurch school.
Security cameras at Linwood College captured Mohammad Akif, 15, being beaten by one boy while another shouted racist taunts.
Mohammad suffered a cracked cheekbone, chipped tooth, cut to the head, bruised ribs and bruising in the attack on Tuesday Aug 4.
He arrived in Christchurch from Fiji three weeks ago to join his mother, who has a two-year work permit.
Zeenat Akif said her son was walking down a school corridor doing an errand when he was set upon by pupils who had been sent out of the classroom.
"My son was going past and they blocked him off," she said. "He tried to go around them and then they said, `tough guy', and then started calling him racist words like `curry chicken', `black Indian', `Indian boy'."
Mohammad was punched, kicked and lifted in the air and pinned against a wall, Akif said.
"We came from Suva, where my kids were living in fear with what was going on there," she said. "My house was robbed and broken into several times. They came in with weapons.
"We came here to get away from it, to give our kids an education and a happy life to stay away from fear."
The same boys had bullied her son since he started school, but he had not complained to teachers, she said.
After she was phoned and went to the school, Akif found Mohammad sitting with an ice-pack over his face.
"He had been given chocolate and chips and the nurse had looked at him," she said. "He was so badly assaulted they should have not waited for his mum to come. They should have called an ambulance."
Akif took her son to a 24-hour surgery, where he was X-rayed and given painkillers.
She had since spoken to other parents in the Indian community whose children had been bullied by the group of boys.
"This isn't the first time. Why are those boys still at school? It's threatening, and my son is very scared," she said.
Mohammad said he was too scared to return to school.
"I don't want to go back to school until I'm safe because there were other boys there too. I feel shocked and worried. I never expected this to happen," he said.
Linwood College principal Rob Burrough said a 15-year-old boy who assaulted Mohammad had been suspended. The other boy, who it appeared had shouted racial taunts, was also suspended and "his future at school is also under question now".
The school would pay Mohammad's medical fees and seek compensation from his attacker, Burrough said. "We're really, really disappointed and quite angry that these boys have done this."
Burrough said the attack was unprovoked.
"We've seen the security-camera footage and there is no question about that, so it should be a reasonably straightforward case for the board [of trustees]," he said.
"Students should feel safe, so we're embarrassed that a small proportion of our school has let the wider school down."
Constable John Groen, of the New Brighton police, said police were investigating the assault after they were contacted by the school.
The Press, Christchurch