Flyers printed in awkwardly-worded Chinese with insulting warnings were seen on building walls at the University of Melbourne and Monash University recently, as a new semester just started with a rising number of Chinese students studying in Melbourne.

The posters, found in the most popular sites in the two universities, warned that “Chinese people are not allowed into the building, otherwise they would be indicted or deported". Logos from the National Union of Students, the Chinese Student and Scholars Association at the University of Melbourne, and the Monash Chinese Student Association, were found at the bottom of the posters.

However, the organizations all denied their knowledge about the posters and helped remove them around campus. “Our society has been maliciously slandered by these notices put up around the university campus and it has created a harmful and poisonous atmosphere for all students,” said those organizations in a joint statement, reported by The New York Times.

A pro-Nazi group The Antipodean Resistance claimed to be responsible for the posters on Twitter. The group, described as “white supremacist” by some media, explained its concept about “being white” on its website: “White people, or Europeans, or whatever you’d like to call us, might have more potential than people from other races, but if we don’t live up to it, we will be as low as the rest of them.”

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang responded on a press conference regarding the issue, saying that China hopes the case can be handled properly as soon as possible. “The safety, dignity and legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese students in Australia must be protected with concrete efforts,” he said.

According to data from the Australian government, there are 502,544 international students in Australia in May 2017, of which 30% are Chinese. The number of Chinese students in Australia raised by 15.7% in 2016 from a year ago, which makes China the top home country for foreign students in Australia.