AP. 18 September 2001. America's Sikhs Become Targets. Gurdarshan Singh was on his way to donate blood for the victims of the terrorist attacks on America when a man in a van pulled up alongside him and began shouting. Minutes later, a second man pulled up on the other side and gave him a vulgar gesture. The men followed him for several minutes, said Singh, a Sikh minister who lives in Rockville, Md. Like Singh, members of the Sikh religious community in the United States have been threatened, beaten and in some cases killed in the past week -- simply because of their appearance. Sikhism is a completely distinct religion from Islam, and yet some members are being mistaken for Arabs or Muslims because they wear turbans and have beards. "I can see the emotions are so high and the people are looking at turbans and thinking I might be connected somehow with (Osama) bin Laden and his followers," Singh said. "Unfortunately the ignorance is so much, and people use their eyes, they don't use their heads." Although the number of backlash crimes will not be tallied for quite some time, anecdotes of attacks on Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs have frightened many Americans. The New York-based United Sikhs in Service of America lists some 196 backlash hate crimes on its Web site as of Tuesday morning. There are an estimated 500,000 Sikhs in North America. In Mesa, Ariz., Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh, was shot and killed outside his gas station Saturday "for no other apparent reason than that he was dark-skinned and wore a turban," Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said. His alleged attacker, Frank Silva Roque, 42, was charged Monday with first-degree murder. "I'm an American. Arrest me. Let those terrorists run wild," Roque was quoted as saying in a police report. Other shootings in the wake of the attacks are also being investigated as hate crimes, including the slaying of a grocer in Dallas and the killing of grocery store owner Adel Karas, a Coptic Christian and Egyptian immigrant who lived in San Gabriel, Calif. Over the weekend, a 54-year-old California woman was arrested in Oregon after attempting to pull a turban off the head of a Sikh near Eugene. She believed he was an Islamic extremist. The arrest was the second incident of backlash in Oregon. A 33-year-old man was arrested last week after making a threatening phone call to the Islamic Cultural Center in Eugene. In Youngstown, Ohio, Tejinder Singh, a Sikh, said someone made rude comments to him as he stood in a parking lot. Someone also set fire to a hedge outside his brother's gas station in Cortland, Ohio, he said. ------------------------------------------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green ---- Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ---- In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
