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By Lenora Chu
The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 have Americans struggling to cope with death, destruction and a loss of innocence. The American flags that have sprouted on doorsteps and storefronts across the nation symbolize the unity of Americans and their resolve to stand tall against terrorism.
Yet for some, the flag does not represent unity for all. The spirit of Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans has been put to the test by a racially motivated backlash spawned by the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
Both groups have become the objects of shootings, rock-throwing, racial slurs and harassment since that day of infamy.
Amrik Singh Chawla, a financial consultant who was in downtown Manhattan when the World Trade Center fell, was targeted with racial slurs the same day the World Trade Center went down.
“I was chased down into a subway tunnel by people calling me a terrorist,” Chawla said. “I’m an American, I grew up in Brooklyn. I don’t want to be scared of other Americans.”
“People have been saying to me ‘Wipe them out.’ or ‘Kill them all,’” said Khalid Almuti, 29, a Muslim of Palestinian origin. Almuti has also been a target of racial slurs and said that he is trying to avoid being in public.
“Muslim Americans are just as shocked as other Americans,” Almuti said. “We have nothing to do with what happened. We are doubly angry, and also doubly afraid because we are experiencing backlash. We have to deal with two threats at the same time.”
Community groups in New York City have documented hundreds of racially motivated attacks.
“Incidents range from verbal harassment to serious incidents like assaults, and three people have already died around the country,” said Margaret Fung, the executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF).
Suman Mazumdar, a reporter for India Abroad, said that rather than playing victim, South Asians should be more proactive in showing their faces as part of the American livelihood. “There haven’t been many South Asians giving food and clothing to the World Trade Center rescue effort,” Mazumdar told a group convened by the South Asian Journalists Association two weeks ago. “People need to come out and say ‘we are a part of this society.’”
Mira Kumar, a financial relations manager, believes that South Asians should expect only what treatment they themselves give to others. “If Hindu Americans want their civil rights to be observed, then [they should] observe America’s civil rights,” she said. “This is not a time for Pakistani-Indian scores to be settled.”
The media has a responsibility to make the public aware of the backlash against South Asians, said several South Asian journalists and community activists.
Purvi Shah, a board member of New York City-based SAKHI association for South Asian women has been disappointed by what she calls the scant media attention to the backlash.
“The media didn’t seem to think there were enough incidents to give it coverage,” she said.
Here is a partial list of race incidents that have occured since the attack. By Associated Press.
OREGON
• Shari Mitchell, 54, of San Rafael, Calif., approached two men on Sept. 16 at an Interstate 5 rest stop near Eugene, Oregon State Police said. Believing them to be Islamic fundamentalists, she blamed them for terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Jagjit Gill, 41, of Kent, Wash., said he and his father-in-law Santokh Sing, 60, stopped at the rest area for a snack. When they saw Mitchell coming their way, they waved to her, Gill said. But Mitchell responded with curse words and racist remarks.
An old man at the rest area attempted to intervene, telling Mitchell that the men had nothing to do with the attacks.
She told the man to “shut up, these guys are murderers,” Gill said.
She then slapped one of the men and attempted to remove Sing’s turban.
“I told her ‘don’t touch the turban,’ “ Gill said.
Mitchell eventually left. Police caught up to her on Interstate 5 and charged her with intimidation and harassment. She could be sentenced to more than a year in jail.
“Physically we’re fine, mentally we’re very upset,” Gill said. “We’re scared; it gets into your mind.”
• The Indian owner of a Eugene Dunkin’ Donuts franchise said he has received more than a dozen threatening phone calls since the terrorist attacks.
Vandals have also painted the store windows with graffiti, said Joseph Mungra, a 35-year-old U.S. citizen and native of India.
“I felt like I was in some foreign country,” he said.
• In Portland on Sept. 14 according to police, an Iraqi convenience store clerk was threatened by two customers after he asked them for identification so they could buy beer. The men told the clerk they would blow up his homeland and the Arco station where he worked.
WASHINGTON
• A Somalian Muslim woman was attacked by three white men shouting that they hated her religion and she should be evicted from the United States, Seattle police said. The woman was leaving a West Seattle building when a car pulled up and three white men began shouting at her, eventually pulling a knife and cutting off the bottom of her dress.
The woman ran into a store for help and the attackers drove off and were not located, police said.
• The Olympic View Deli in Edmonds, owned by a longtime local resident who is Iranian, was vandalized on Sept. 16.
• An East African man was pushing shopping carts at a Home Depot in South Seattle on Sept. 16 when two white men pulled up and threatened to shoot him. The attackers did not mention race or religion, but the victim said he felt like it was a hate crime, police said.
• Authorities filed a hate-crime charge against a Raymond Isais Jr., 21, of San Diego who is accused of assaulting Kulwinder Singh, a Sikh taxicab driver in Seatac, Wash.
If convicted, Isais faces at least three months in jail.
• Another Washington man was charged with malicious harassment in what police said was a threat to a mosque in southeast Seattle within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
• Two other people are under investigation after being arrested. In one case police said a man was caught pouring gasoline outside a mosque in North Seattle on the night of Sept. 13. In the other, sheriff’s deputies said a man pounded on and spit at a car driven by a woman of Middle Eastern descent Sept. 11.
CALIFORNIA
• The Stanislaus County sheriff’s department performed an autopsy on Sept. 19 on the body of a 69-year-old Sikh man who was found dead in an irrigation canal.
The family of Surjit Singh Samra believe he was the victim of a hate crime, but there were no obvious signs of foul play, said Kelly Huston of the sheriff’s department.
Samra disappeared Sunday during his daily walk along the Turlock Irrigation Canal near Highway 99. His body was found underwater on Sept. 18, snagged on a shopping cart.
The sheriff’s office was looking at the case closely because Samra’s family was concerned he might have fallen victim to violence directed at Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus following the terrorist attacks.
The cause of death was not immediately determined, but pathologists found no sign of trauma. Samra had diabetes, high blood pressure and had recently been hospitalized for a stroke. The autopsy found no signs of a second stroke.
ARIZONA
• Nearly 3,000 people gathered on Sept. 22 to remember Balbir Singh Sodhi, who was fatally shot outside the gasoline station he operated during a one-man rampage that police said targeted victims because of their race. They were Sikh, Jew, Christian, Muslim and more, some with veils or turbans, others in suits and ties. They were of many different races.
“My father had a lot of friends, but no enemies. The word hatred was not in his vocabulary at all, but he ended up falling from the bullet of hate,” said Sodhi’s son, Sukhwinder Singh. “My family doesn’t want any innocent people hurt.”
Sodhi’s death touched off protests in India and a call to President Bush by India’s prime minister.
• On Sept. 17 a drunken man allegedly attacked a doctor of Pakistani descent who was trying to treat him in an emergency room in Tempe, authorities said. Police and hospital officials said the 39-year-old man blamed the doctor for the terrorist attacks on the United States.
The man allegedly choked the doctor and shouted derogatory remarks at him while at Tempe St. Luke’s Medical Center. The doctor, who did not want his name released, still examined the patient.
TEXAS
• Three middle-school students at Forest Oak Middle School in Fort Worth have been charged with making a terroristic threat for allegedly threatening and harassing a schoolmate who was born in India.
Police say the charges against the three students qualify for misdemeanor prosecution, but they’ll ask prosecutors to upgrade charges to a felony hate crime. The three were taken into custody Sept. 14 after another student told school officials that the three were taunting and threatening to “shoot and kill” the Indian student in the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
CONNECTICUT
• Hamid Raza, a Bethel merchant, returned to his store after attending a vigil for victims last week to find it vandalized. Someone threw a 60-pound rock through the window of his Discount Dollar store, which sells, among other items, U.S. flags.
“I’m not going to get scared,” said the 44-year-old Pakistan native. His customers and friends have rallied around him.
• In Torrington, vandals tossed a rock with the message “Go back to your country” through the window of a convenience store operated by a Muslim.
• Bristol police are investigating a report that a person walked into a sandwich shop owned by a man of Middle Eastern descent and threatened to blow up the building. Bristol police have already made two arrests for threat and intimidation.
NEW JERSEY
• A man reportedly entered a gas station in Monmouth County and asked an Indian clerk whether he was Pakistani or Afghani. When the clerk said he was Indian, the man showed a knife and said, “Good, because if you were Pakistani or Afghani I would have killed you,” according to Emily Hornaday, a spokesman for the state Division of Criminal Justice.
• Charles Harvey, 23, allegedly shouted ethnic slurs at an Arab American man and his son before he threatened the pair with a knife and demanded money, police said. The man used his cane to fend off the attacker and eventually got control of the weapon, police said.
Harvey, of Hamilton, was charged with aggravated assault, robbery and weapons offenses in connection with the incident.
• Choudhry Hasan, a North Brunswick man originally from Pakistan, said he and his friends were stopped by police shortly after they left a Burger King. Police said they had received a report that a suspicious package had been left at the restaurant.
Hasan, whose brother was killed in Dallas on Sept. 15 in what is under investigation as a possible bias attack, said police told him, “You guys look like terrorists.”
Hasan said he and his companions were let go after a few minutes.
North Brunswick Mayor David Spaulding said American Muslims need to be understanding.
“It’s a scary situation,” Spaulding told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Tuesday’s edition. “So, I am sorry this happened to the man in North Brunswick, but he has to understand. If our police officers were insensitive, they need to understand that people of the same religion last week killed thousands of people.”
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