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New York Sikhs Join Ranks of Victims of Aftermath Violence
NEW YORK, Sept 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The face of Afghanistan-based Osama bin Laden has been plastered across newspapers and television networks every day since the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, and some Sikhs are paying the price, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP)
"Kill all Arabs," a youth on a bicycle screamed at Swinder Singh Joson as he came out of a downtown subway station several days after two hijacked planes slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, causing the buildings to collapse.
"The image of bin Laden is being shown again and again on television and people are getting the wrong idea," said Swinder, a hospital administrator who is also general secretary of the Sikh Cultural Society in the borough of Queens.
Swinder said many Americans thought Sikhs were Muslims, and in particular followers of the Taliban.
"Because they have beards and we have beards, they have turbans and we have turbans, they assume that we are terrorists," said Swinder, adding that many of his friends had also suffered abuse since the attack.
In several cases the abuse has descended into violence - a 66-year-old man was badly beaten with a baseball bat by four youths outside the Richmond Hill
gurdwara, a Sikh temple, in Queens.
The most serious attack has been far from New York in Mesa, Arizona, where the Sikh owner of a petrol station was shot dead last weekend. When arrested after the attack, the suspected gunman was reported to have said, "I'm a patriot."
Eugene Korrera, spokesman for the Indian Consulate in New York, said there had been three incidents of Sikhs being attacked in New York in retaliation for the World Trade Center attack.
"I don't think that a lot of Americans know that 99.9% of the people they see in the country with turbans are Sikhs. We are not Arabs or Muslims, yet I've gotten a lot of nasty insults and stares," said 19-year-old Ravjot Singh Pasricha, from Queens.
"Two members of our community, friends of mine, are still missing. It is our tragedy too," he said.
An estimated 700 Muslims also died in the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
Earlier this week, U.S. Congressman John Cooksey (R-LA) encouraged already heated feelings of discrimination and hatred when he asserted that "someone who comes in that's got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around that diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over," on Louisiana radio stations Monday.
In the days since the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Muslims, Arabs and other minorities, have been targeted by those who consider them responsible for the attacks.
At least three people have died in violence related to a backlash intended to target Muslims and Arabs, with hundreds more wounded and harassed.
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