CALIFORNIA, USA—There has been an unprecedented rise of deadly attacks on Sikhs throughout the US after the recent terrorist attacks in San Bernardino two weeks ago. Additionally, Donald Trump and other Republican Presidential Candidates have been stoking the flames of racism in the country. Comments on making it acceptable to ban Muslims and saying that all Muslims could be terrorists, affects Sikhs first as many Americans associate turbans with Islam. In the space of two weeks there has been a sharp increase in incidents of intimidation, deadly confrontations, shootings, robberies and hate related crime on Sikhs.
Members of the public have been highlighting their experiences on social media. Harrowing tales of the weak and vulnerable being targeted by ignorant bigots are rife. While random acts of intolerance and stereotyping have been recorded too.
Bryson Wallace of Oakland, California highlights a chance run-in with an elderly Sikh gentlemen who breaks down for fear of being targeted mistakenly as a Muslim.
This video of Darshan Singh of Los Angeles was posted by a fellow passenger who filmed him as he slept and compared him to Bin Laden. Darshan Singh felt shocked and humiliated that this was done to him.
Sikhs have been speaking of a noticeable difference in atmosphere when being in public. Extra long stares, snide comments, and snickering have been on the increase in the last two weeks. As if the whole fabric of society seems to have taken a cold bias towards those looking remotely different.
Sikhs have faced the brunt of ignorance from ill-informed members of the public who have been venting frustration towards the Sikhs.
In a particularly striking case of racist bullying, a 12 year old victim of Sikh heritage who was randomly accused of having a bomb on him at school, resulted in him being arrested and detained for three days. His parents weren’t even contacted to inform them of the whereabouts of their son. Only after making inquiries at station after station were they finally told what was happening.
A shopkeeper shot in the face, racist graffiti on a Gurdwara, Sikhs refused entry into a football game in Southern California and a Sikh woman recently was forced to show her breast pump before taking her seat on an airplane in Minneapolis because another passenger thought she might be a terrorist. These are but a few of the highlighted cases that have surfaced due to brave individuals coming forward to share their experiences.
“I feel scared when I go out in public now,” said Hardeep Kaur, a Sikh living in California. “I’m fearful that some radical that believes in Trump is going to do something.”
Many Sikh organizations have been setting up databases to log such hate crimes. The Sikh Coalition, an organization that was born out of the violence and discrimination that Sikhs encountered after the 9/11 attacks, has been closely monitoring these cases.
Sapreet Kaur, executive director of the Sikh Coalition said, “No single community in our country should be targeted for this type of misguided bigotry and hatred. Our different faiths, backgrounds and experiences are central to the values that we all hold dear as Americans. We’re strongest as a nation when we stand together.”
She continued to ask Sikhs to exercise extra vigilance and caution and to report all hate crimes to authorities and Sikh civil rights organizations.
Dear M Singh
When will you over come your RSS obsession and Phobia.
Bigger challenges face us than RSS like
1) Burning up of earth by expanding Sun
2) Switching off of our Sun
3) Metereors striking us
4) Technological singularity out evolving us
5) Weapon’s of mass destruction in wrong hand
Do some thing about these problems.
RSS is not worth spending on your time.
I don’t have any RSS phobia as that means fear of the RSS – how can anyone be afraid of such a sad, pathetic bunch of losers peddling a lie of greatness when their forebears were unable to either defend or even liberate their lands? I don’t have an obsession with the RSS either just repugnance and disdain for their comedic display of valour and honour. As for spending my time fretting over an inevitable and natural event such as the Sun becoming a super nova in 5 to 7 BILLION YEARS rather than concentrating on the here and now – well why don’t we let you and your RSS geniuses use their brains to figure out ‘these problems’, after all they say a billion monkeys typing away at a billion typewriters might be capable of reproducing the works of Shakespeare and you lot believe in flying, talking monkey kings (come to think of it a singularity might help you attain some intelligence). As for Weapons of mass destruction in the wrong hands – RSS, Shiv Sena, BJP, Badal Dal and Punjab Police – let’s start disarming that lot of dangerous loons.
It is charecterstic of all Empires.
Its citizen’s are first class
BULLIES
If you can’t bear it then abort the Empire and return home.
Return ‘home’ where you can as a SIkh have your rights denied and are told to keep your head down, your mouth shut or face fake encounters, false arrest, torture, disappearance and extra judicial killing. Return home where you can expect to spend more than 31 years trying to secure justice in the courts for murders, rapes and pillage all supported and sanctioned by the State. But RSS Harinder is right about the characteristic of all Empire’s is that its citizens are first class bullies – definitely applies to Hindutva Empire with its Brahmins.
You must not kill innocent people like Bhinderwala and his followers did.
There will be none of these things like Fake encounters or Extra judicial killings or Rapes.
Also don’t try changing boundaries of any nation as it is a function of world Empires .
Don’t flight States or any Nation without legal sanctions.
Remember we are all controlled and monitired by
“EMPIRE”
I don’t believe in killing any innocent people RSS Harinder nor do I support the notion of state sponsored ‘collective punishment’ targeting religious groups. You clearly do as you posited a ‘tit for tat’ rationale to try and explain how tens of thousands of Sikhs by the apparatus of a Nation State can be murdered on the spurious pretext that that is justified. I would remind you that Hitler orchestrated his Nazi Regime’s Kristallnacht vengeance attacks on the Jews on the pretext that a German (diplomat Ernst vom Rath) had been assassinated by a Jew (Herschel Grynszpan). As a known supporter of the RSS I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that you have no problem with extra judicial killings and rapes as the Nazi SS didn’t have any compunction either.
And again we come to your never ending exhortations to the Sikhs not to behave like Sikhs and defend their civil liberties and human rights (as well as those of other faiths facing oppression and persecution including you might remember the Kashmiri Hindu Pandits under the Mughals) . This ‘slave mentality’ you have (telling Sikhs to be quiet, keep your heads down, eyes closed to abuse and injustice) is the reason India was conquered and subjugated for so many centuries by foreign rulers and why you had to wait for the Khalsa to rise up and drive them out. Don;t fight States or any Nation without legal sanction – what the hell does that mean? Bhagat Singh was wrong to stand against the British rule because resistance to British tyranny was illegal under the law at that time? Should Nelson Mandela have accepted the indignities of apartheid laws in South Africa because they were the legitimate sanctioned law of the land? WAs Martin Luther King wrong to defy the laws of Alabama and Georgia (voted for the electorate of those federal States) and just accept the Ku Klux Klan could firebomb black churches with Impunity? I know your answer to the latter question is a resounding yes as you have time and again urged Sikhs just to accept the bitter medicine of 1984 and ‘just move on’. We are Sikhs RSS Harinder – You obey laws when they are just and you defy and over turn them when they do not deliver justice. That is the message of Guru Gobind Singh Ji and we have taken that to heart to overthrow Mughal and British despotic rule and will continue to do so when anyone thinks to oppress us. The only Empire that controls you are not the dead Empires of yesteryear (Roman, Byzantine, British et al that you continually evoke to try and take the blame for Indian injustices) but the slave mentality you still labour under. It may be enough for you to cower and cringe as your forebears did before you but the Singhs were transformed from sparrows into hawks in 1699 so we cannot go back to scrabbling around gratefully in the dirt eeking out a miserable subsistence on bugs and worms. Don’t worry though we will dutifully stand up for you even though you don’t have the necessary backbone to do so yourself. You just keep on with your little parades and speeches in your khaki short pants – you and the hopelessly deluded RSS can be the entertainment division.
Even Christians were persecuted in Roman. Empire.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Christian_policies_in_the_Roman_Empire
SO by that logic it is ‘reasonable’ for Sikhs to face persecution under Hindutva Empire – after all we have far more in common with monotheistic Christianity than we do with polytheistic Hinduism?
And a further irony which is probably lost on you RSS Harinder is that the Romans too believed in a pantheon of Gods, Goddesses and Demi Gods.
Come to think of it the Romans practised puja worship and idolatry too… Maybe RSS Harinder is likening the Hinduvata Empire to the Roman Empire and Sikhs to persecuted Christians after all? But hang on didn’t the Christians win out over their vastly superior numbered and armed pagan oppressors in the end? Mmm…
Muslims want this to happen. We must educate the world what Sikhs have done to defeat the muslim Caliphates of the past as we are need today to defeat the modern Caliphate in the form of ISIS.
I suggest we let the RSS fight on the front line first against ISIS as they have the uniforms but no battle experience or proven courage and we don’t want them running away like the Iraqi army.
” Forgive and Forget”.
and above all
“This too shall pass”
RSS Harinder 1984 Genocide apologist strikes again with his completely contrary to Sikh ethos message.