FBI wakes up to hate against Sikhs, Hindus, Arabs
For the first time, the FBI will start tracking hate crimes against Sikhs, Hindus and Arabs, meeting one of the long-pending demands of these minority communities which have increasingly been targeted post-9/11 in the United States.
After years of pressure from civil rights groups and legislators, the FBI Advisory Policy Board on Wednesday recommended tracking hate crimes against Sikhs, Hindus and Arab Americans.
At its meeting, the board recommended to update FBI’s Hate Crime Incident Report Forms, which serve as the primary mechanism for the government to document hate crimes committed in the US, to include crimes against these communities.
To date, the FBI has not collected and tracked hate crimes against these communities despite serious hate crimes perpetrated against the community members.
Sikhs have been targeted in recent years in California, Florida, New York, Washington and most prominently in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, where six worshippers were killed at a gurdwara in August 2012.
In December, a woman pushed a Hindu man to his death on a New York City subway track and then told police, “I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001.”
Statistics on the population of these communities in the United States vary. Singh’s organisation estimates 500,000 Sikh-Americans; the Hindu American Foundation says there are 2.3 million Hindus in the US. According to the Arab American Institute, there are about 3.5 million Arab-Americans.
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