B.RAMAN
The “USA Today” of August 7,2012, has reported as
follows: “Sikh rights groups have reported a rise in bias attacks since the
Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The Washington-based Sikh Coalition has
reported more than 700 incidents, which advocates blame on anti-Islamic
sentiment. Sikhs don't practice the same religion as Muslims, but their long
beards and turbans often cause them to be mistaken for Muslims, advocates say…..But
the turban also attracts violence to individuals and their places of worship.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, four drunk teenagers set fire to the
Gobind Sadan, a Sikh house of worship in Hastings, N.Y.”
2. From a study of the reports published in the US
media, it would appear that since 9/11, there have been two attacks on Sikh
places of worship in the US. The first was the arson attack by some drunk
teenagers in Hastings, N.Y, which apparently did not lead to any casualties and
the second the attack with a hand gun on
a group of Sikhs who had gathered inside a gurudwara in Oak Creek in the
Milwaukee area of Wisconsin on August 5,2012, which led to the death of six
Sikhs, four of them turbaned priests. Among those killed was the
founding-President of the Gurudwara, 65-year-old Satwant Singh Kaleka.
3. One of those present in the gurudwara told the
CNN in an interview that the gunman appeared to be specifically targeting
bearded, turbaned members of the congregation and not those who were clean
shaven. He first killed two Sikhs in the parking lot outside the gurudwara,
then shot dead four more inside, exited and seriously injured two police
officers who had rushed to the gurudwara. He also injured one other Sikh, but
it is not known whether he injured him inside or outside the gurudwara. The
gunman was ultimately shot dead by one of the police officers.
4. The gunman used a 9 mm hand gun for the killing.
From a study of the reports in the US media, he does not appear to have
indulged in indiscriminate firing. If it was indiscriminate firing, there would
have been more injured people. It was targeted firing directed at Sikhs with
beard and turban.
5. Speaking to the media, Teresa
Carlson, FBI special agent in charge of the investigation, said the
"motive is still being assessed at this time," but the shooting is
being investigated as domestic terrorism. The FBI defines terrorism as violence
used to coerce a government or civilian population to advance political or
social objectives.
6.Paul Bresson,an FBI spokesman, told the media: "We're
looking at hate crime as a possibility. You have a shooting that took place in
a house of worship. This was not just a random thing. There's a feeling that
this was somehow thought out and targeted."
7. By the evening of August 6, the gunman was
identified as Wade Michael Page, aged 40, originally of Colorado and now living
in Wisconsin. According to Lt.Col.Laurel Devine of the Public Affairs Division
of the US Army, Page joined the Army in 1992 and was discharged at the rank of
specialist in 1998. He specialised in psychological operations. He was posted
at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, Fort Bliss in Texas and Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
He received several awards, including five achievement medals, two good conduct
medals and a parachutist badge.
8.In a press statement, Page has been described by
the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a non-governmental organisation which
maintains a data base of white extremists, as "a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been
the leader of a racist white-power band." The centre, which reportedly has
a database of more than 20,000 people it has identified as white supremacists,
neo-Nazis and other members of hate groups, said Page figured in its data base
since 2000.
9. According to Heidi Beirich, of the
Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2000, Page came to its notice for the first
time when he tried to purchase unidentified materials from National Alliance, a
neo-Nazi group that influenced Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. He was
subsequently noticed associating himself with some music groups that propagated
“hate music”. Among such groups were two called
Youngland and End Apathy.
10. According to her, Page
used to write for a white supremacist website called Storm Front under the name
of Youngland. His groups played at music festivals meant for white
supremacists, skinheads and neo-Nazis. His band played in a festival called
Uprise in 2010 and he attended other festivals including Hammerfest, one of the
largest festivals. She said that the number of hate groups operating in the US
has increased since Barack Obama was elected President in 2008.The number of
hate groups identified by her organisation has gone up from 602 in 2000 to 1018
last year.
11. The “USA Today” has
quoted Beirich as identifying five White extremists figuring in the database of her
Centre as having taken to violence. Apart from Page, these are: James Von Brunn
who died after shooting and killing a black security guard at the U.S.
Holocaust Museum in 2009 in Washington, D.C.; Richard Poplawski who was
convicted of shooting and killing three Pittsburgh police officers in 2009;
Keith Luke accused of killing two people and raping and shooting a third in a
shooting spree in Brockton, Mass., in 2009; and Kevin Harpham, an Army veteran
convicted of planting a bomb at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane
last year.
12. In an interview in
April 2010, Page said he started his band End Apathy in 2005 out of frustration
that "we have the potential to accomplish so much more as individuals and
a society in whole." He added: "The concept was based on trying to
figure out what it would take to actually accomplish positive results in
society and what is holding us back. A lot of what I realized at the time was
that if we could figure out how to end people's apathetic ways, it would be the
start toward moving forward. Of course after that it requires discipline,
strict discipline to stay the course in our sick society."
13. According to Marc
Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League as quoted by “USA Today”, Page also was
a member of the Hammerskins, "one of the oldest hard-core racist
groups" in the country. The music groups with which he was associated,
were affiliated with the Hammerskins.
14.The “USA Today” quotes Pitcavage as stating as
follows: “Page had a number of tattoos identifying him as a skinhead and
neo-Nazi. There was a tattoo of a cog that included the number 838, which means
"Hail the crossed hammers," a skinhead slogan. There also was a tattoo
of a Celtic cross with the number 14, a reference to the 14-word white
supremacist slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a
future for white children." He also had a tattoo of a totenkopf, a death's
head or skull, which is a neo-Nazi symbol that shows allegiance to the white
supremacist movement.”
15. Analysts in US media attribute the increase in
the number of White extremist hate groups to the following factors. Firstly,
the propaganda carried on by White extremists that by 2040 immigrants from
Latin America will constitute the majority of the US population. Secondly, the
belief of the White extremists that an increase in the vote bank of the Blacks
and other minorities contributed to the victory of Obama in the Presidential
election. Thirdly, unemployment.
Economic distress adds to the anti-minority anger of the White extremists.
16.What has been the contribution of the post-9/11
anti-Muslim suspicions and prejudices to the growth of hate groups? This has
not been adequately analysed though this too must be a factor. The increase in
hate crime against the Sikhs could be
attributed partly to economic and partly to religious factors. The economic
factor being jealousy over the prosperity achieved by them. The religious
factor is the inability of sections of the population----even people not identified
with White extremists--- to distinguish the Sikhs from the Muslims and Sikhism
from Islam.
17. Initial reports of the attack spoke of the
possibility of there being more than one perpetrator. Now, the police seem to
believe that there was only one. Was it a lone wolf attack self-motivated or
was it an attack motivated by an organisation or group spreading hatred against
Sikhs? The indications till now are that it was probably a self-motivated lone
wolf attack.
18.If the observations of a clean-shaven Sikh who
was interviewed by the CNN that Page
seemed to be targeting turbaned Sikhs are correct, there would be a greater
possibility of the attack being due to religious bias than economic anger.
19.The FBI Special agent Teresa Carlson said: “We
are looking at ties to white supremacy groups. Page had contact with law
enforcement in the past and was in FBI files, but the FBI had no reason to
believe he was planning an attack.” It needs to be added that most of the
details carried by the US media regarding Page’s links with White extremist
groups as mentioned above have come from non-governmental research groups monitoring
white extremist activities and not from the police. The
CBS TV channel, citing unnamed sources, said evidence suggested race or
ethnicity might have played a role in the violence, but it added no links to extremist groups have been
confirmed.
20. The Journal Sentinel
of Milwaukee reported that Page
apparently worked as a truck driver with Granger, Iowa-based Barr-Nunn
Transportation, from about April 2006 to August 2010 while living in
Fayetteville, N.C. An employee at the company reportedly told the newspaper
that Page left "involuntarily" but declined to elaborate. The only
criminal information it had on Page was one of issuing a check in October 1997 which bounced, it said.
21.The incident has not revived the debate on the need for
effective gun control in the US. Many States allow unrestricted open carriage
of guns. Some States do impose restrictions on concealed carriage, However, it
is so easy to buy and possess guns without effective background checks. A gun
is seen as a weapon of self-defence and political leaders do not want to impose
controls on the right to protect oneself by acquiring a gun. The argument that
many of the guns are used not for self-defence, but for killing others in anger
or hatred or in outbursts of irrationality has not made much of an impact
either on large sections of the political class or on the pro-gun lobby. It is
futile to expect that the massacre of the Sikhs could have any impact on the debate
on this subject.
22.The Sikh community, which was already concerned
over the spate of hate attacks on individual Sikhs like taxi-drivers, gas
station attendants etc since 9/11, will be even more concerned over this attack
on a congregation of Sikhs in a Gurudwara resulting in multiple fatalities.
There are already reports of unhappiness among members of the Sikh community in
the US over what they view as the apathy of the authorities of the two
countries in the light of continuing attacks on individual Sikhs and their
failure to protect them.
23. The police may have difficulty in protecting
individual Sikhs subject to surprise attacks in public places, but the Sikhs
will not be able to understand the inability of the Police to protect them when
they are in groups in places like
gurudwaras. There are already suggestions for increased police patrolling of
areas where gurudwaras are located. Posting of static guards in such places
where Sikhs gather for prayers and other religious and social occasions should
be possible. It is estimated that there are about 120 gurudwaras and other Sikh
places of worship in the US. Providing
them effective protection should be possible. The Government of India should
take this up with the US authorities.
24. It is also necessary for the Sikh community to
interact frequently with non-Sikh communities, particularly Whites, in the US
in order to remove wrong perceptions regarding Sikhism as a religion and the
Sikhs as a community. ( 7-8-12)
( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director,
Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate, Chennai Centre For China
Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )
