Sikh body asks inclusion of hate crimes against Sikhs in stats

In the wake of the shooting incident at a Wisconsin Gurdwara, an American Sikh advocacy group Wednesday demanded that hate crimes against the community be included in the federal statistics on such offences.

“Given the rush of hate crimes Sikhs endured after 9/11, one would think that the federal government would be tracking hate crimes against Sikhs on its official forms, but that’s not happening,” said Sapreet Kaur, executive director of the New York-based Sikh Coalition said.

“Given the tragedy in Oak Creek, we renew our call on the federal government to begin track hate crimes against the Sikh community. How can you address a problem you are not measuring?” she asked in a statement.

Wade Michael Page, 40, an ex-army veteran, went on a shooting spree killing six Sikhs and injuring three others, including a police officer, at the Gurdwara on August 5, before dying of a self-inflicted gun shot wound.

Although Sikhs continue to experience hate crimes because of their distinct religious identity, the FBI has no distinct category to track such crimes, the Sikh Coalition said.

While hate crimes against other racial and religious groups are tracked, hate crime suffered by Sikhs are not.

Thus, under current federal policy, victims of anti-Sikh hate crimes are not even worthy of being statistics, the Sikh Coalition noted, thus demanding that such crimes be included in federal hate crime statistics.

According to Sikh Coalition, American lawmakers lead again by Congressman, Joseph Crowley, plan to soon introduce a resolution in the US calling for great attention to hate crimes against Sikh Americans.

“The time to make tracking hate crimes against the Sikh community a priority is long overdue,” Crowley said.

“The shooting in Oak Creek was not an isolated incident; in fact, we’ve seen a trend of violence aimed at the Sikh community that must be confronted and brought to an end,” he said.

“That’s why more than 90 of my colleagues and I have been urging the Department of Justice and FBI to start tracking hate crimes against Sikhs,” Crowley had said earlier referring to his effort launched early this year.

In April, 94 Members of Congress, led by Crowley wrote to the US Attorney General Eric Holder calling on the Department of Justice to begin tracking hate crimes against Sikhs.

The Members of Congress noted that doing so will increase hate crime reporting, improve the quality and accuracy of hate crime data, and strengthen relationships between Sikhs and local law enforcement agencies nationwide.

“The more information our law enforcement agencies have, the more they can do to help prevent crimes against the Sikh community and bring those who commit them to justice,” Crowley had said.

“We can only start addressing the problem when we know the full scope and severity of threats against Sikhs, and collecting hate crime data is the place to start,” he had said.