Greens councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan suffers broken nose in ‘punch attack’

Brisbane Greens councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan claims to have been punched in the face by a stranger, leaving him with a broken nose.

Brisbane Greens councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan claims to have been punched in the face by a stranger on Friday night.

The Gabba Ward councillor was hospitalised with a broken nose following the punch, also sustaining a cut near his eye and chipped teeth.

Mr Sriranganathan said on social media that he attempted to de-escalate an apparently inebriated man acting violently.

“It looked like someone could get hurt pretty badly … when he started chasing a couple of other young people on the footpath, I tried to intervene and de-escalate,” he said in his post.

“Without warning, he rushed forward and punched me hard on the nose.”.

Gabba Ward Councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan shared an image of injuries he said were sustained from a punch.

He went on to claim he had successfully intervened in similar situations by “calming things down”, however this instance has forced him to cancel upcoming meetings and events.

“It’s painful and tender, and I don't think I’ll be able to breathe clearly through it until it’s reset,” he said.

A portrait of Mr Sriranganathan won the The Courier-Mail People's Choice Award at Brisbane Portrait Prize in October and the colourful and polarising councillor added that his attack was “an indictment upon our entire society”.

“West End has way more cops than 99% of suburbs and towns in Queensland … There’s also heaps of surveillance cameras all over that part of Vulture Street/Boundary Street,” he said.

Martina Clarke’s winning painting of Jonathan Sriranganathan.

“We have stronger criminal penalties and tighter bail conditions for violent offences than we did in past generations … and Australia is holding way more people in prison today than at pretty much any point in the nation’s history. But that didn’t stop me getting assaulted,” his post read.

Mr Sriranganathan encouraged society to value his attacker as a human being and treat him with dignity, saying he likely needs “wraparound support services”.

“The person who broke my nose was in a really bad state on Friday night … I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a chronic alcohol addiction and a lot of trauma that he hasn’t had enough help to deal with,” he wrote.

“Sometimes commentators talk about ‘breaking the cycle of violence’.

“They don’t talk about the deep violence of evicting someone into homelessness … or the subtle violence of moving on certain kinds of people and excluding them from a community together.

“I don’t think we’ll be breaking any cycles until we recognise that all those different kinds of violence are connected.”