People's Democracy

INSTANCES OF ATTACKS

ACCORDING to Asian American Legal Defence and Education Fund (AALDEF), places where Asians have been the targets of racist attacks included New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington DC, Massachusetts, Rhod Island, North Carolina, Arizona, California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas. Below here are some of the incidents cited in that report :

NEW YORK

• A Huntington Station man screamed "(I am) doing this for my country" as he attempted to rundown a Pakistani woman with his vehicle. He revved his engine for several minutes, put his car into drive and headed directly at the Pakistani woman standing on the sidewalk.
• A Sikh man at Richmond Hill, Queens (where large Indo-Caribbean and Sikh community reside), was assaulted with a baseball bat and shot at with a BB gun by a group of people. He was seriously injured.
• Three Sikh men abroad a train leaving Grand Central Station were singled out by NYPD officers who asked to search their bags. It was reported that the officers kept saying, "We’re sorry we have to do this" after the men asked why their bags were being searched.
• A South Asian woman riding a New York City subway was spat on and told that she belonged to the group of people who blew up the World Trade Centre.
• Four white teens threw three bricks through the first floor bathroom and kitchen windows of a Sikh family’s home at Brooklyn. That night, eggs were thrown at their second floor window.

NEW JERSEY

• When a South Asian man driving from work at Jersey City to his home at Franklin Township approached a stop sign, a group of people threw garbage and stones at his car while they cursed and told him to "go back to his country". The harassment continued as he drove on interstate 78, when a car next to him sped up and gestured to him to lower his window. The driver of the other vehicle cursed at him and said "You did it".
• The two year old daughter of a Woodbridge resident was playing outside her apartment complex when a number of teenagers started to pelt her with stones while yelling racial slurs.

NORTH CAROLINA

• Two Muslim students at North-Carolina State University were physically attacked and spat upon.

CALIFORNIA

• In Los Angeles, a Pakistani man parked his vehicle at the Glendale Galleria Mall and returned to find it scratched across the right side with the words, "Nuke em" written all over.
• In San Fransisco, vandals threw a bag of blood on the doorstep of an immigration centre that serves Arabs and the city's large Asian population. They also threw a large plastic bag labelled "pig's blood" on the front door of Minority Assistance Services in the Mission District.

MICHIGAN

• An Indian American student from the University of Michigan was harassed by two white men as they screamed, "Go back to your country."

WISCONSIN :

• Two Asian students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison were attacked while walking down West Gilman Street . This assault was the fourth incident of violence to occur near the district, and local police have not classified it as hate crime.

TEXAS

• A Pakistani grocer in Pleasant Grove, Dallas was slain; the local police have not yet determined the motive for the killing.
• A southwest Houston tire store caught fire, two days after customers threatened the Pakistani owner. The customer threatened the victim saying : " You are going to come in my country and threaten me? The way you burned us, I am gonna burn you and I am gonna burn your place and I'm gonna burn your people".