Opinion

A September Of Sorrows

Even as America mourns the dead of 9/11, Asians become victims of hate crimes

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A September Of Sorrows
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For weeks after September 11, Salman Hamdani was rumoured to have been a fugitive terrorist, or languishing in federal custody. A local newspaper even linked the 23-year-old Pakistan-born laboratory research assistant to the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC). A flyer with his picture was circulated among city police, announcing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation-New York Police Department joint terrorist task force wanted to speak to him.

Hamdani's body—along with his medical bag—was subsequently found near where the WTC's north tower once stood. It was later ascertained that on that fateful day, Hamdani had witnessed the attacks on the towers from his subway train. Trained as an emergency medical technician, he immediately rushed to Ground Zero to help.

Once his body was found, Hamdani was given a funeral befitting his gallant deed, his coffin draped in a US flag, and New York City Police commissioner Raymond Kelly told mourners, "We don't know how many people he helped, how many lives he saved. He was indeed a hero."

Faroque Ahmad Khan's voice quivers as he recounts Salman's story, declaring at the end, "His story epitomises the fate of Muslims in this country. Post-September 11 paranoia has sent a chill through the Muslim community in America." Khan is a founding member of the Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury, New York, and he should know about those from the minority communities who have been secretly detained under new draconian laws.

Indeed, the US of A, the land of liberty and rights, has changed dramatically since the moment hijackers rammed planes into the WTC. Under a slew of executive rules the US Department of Justice has issued, the government can now detain non-citizens for 48 hours without filing charges. Another regulation permits immigration officials to override the judicial decision of releasing a non-citizen on bail. "These rules are pretty draconian," says attorney Cyrus D. Mehta, who chairs the Committee on Immigration and Nationality Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. "Pre-September 11, people detained on visa violations could easily get out on bond. Now they languish indefinitely in detention."

Many of those arrested for visa violations have been Muslims. But even Sikhs feel the change in attitude on the streets. Targeted for their beards and turbans by ignorant Americans fed on TV images of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, the beleaguered community had believed the outcry against the hate-killing of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona, would provide them respite from xenophobic crime. But Manjit Singh, executive director of the Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force, Washington, says nothing has changed. "Most people think we are either Arabs or Muslims. That ignorance permeates into all facets of a Sikh-American's life—racial bias and prejudices at work place, in housing and public accommodation," he laments.

More than turbans and beards, brown is the skin colour many Americans quickly associate with the hijackers. It's the colour of foreigners, it's the colour of suspicion, it's what they consider evil. Says Murshid Alam, a Bangladeshi-American member of a school board in Queens, New York, "Small kids come up to me and ask 'Are you Taliban? When are you going back to Afghanistan?'"

New York-based Bangladeshi writer Naeem Mohaiemen sees a climate of fear around him, something he hadn't seen in the US before. No doubt its provenance lies in the WTC attacks; what, though, has fuelled it is the "traditional American pattern" of one immigrant community looking down upon another to climb the social ladder. September 11 has provided 'others' the excuse to sniff at men from West and South Asia. And the media has provided the spark.Mohaieman explains, "When the most sophisticated media doesn't distinguish between terrorists and Islam, why would you expect anyone else to do better? That's the way America has changed."

This change can surprise you in streets, in offices, even when you are having fun. Last New Year's eve, Kaleem Kawaja emerged from a party at Maryland to discover one of his car windows smashed and a message reading, "Go Home." And to think Kawaja as director of the Association of Indian Muslims of America has been working hard to distance his community from bin Laden's ideology. "The media has done a great disservice by misrepresentation," he rues.

No wonder disbelief and derision swept through South Asian and Arab communities when a New York Times poll suggested race relations had improved in the city post-September 11. In the first week of the attack, claimed South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow, Americans committed 645 bias incidents against fellow Americans, mostly brown. "The freedom this country was famous for is now under threat," bemoans Alam.

And freedom is getting redefined in many funny ways. For Dr Jasjit Singh Ahluwalia, director, cancer prevention, control, and population sciences, Kansas Cancer Institute, freedom means boarding aeroplanes without the security going in a tizzy. At a Minneapolis airport, they asked him to remove his turban. Security officials claimed he had been picked at random. "Since that incident, I get 'randomly' searched a lot," muses Ahluwalia. "I came to the States when I was a year old. For the first time in my life I realise what it's like to be profiled. Now I know what it feels like to be black."

It's at the airport you experience the paranoia of Americans: the way you are frisked, your baggage is checked, the peremptory questions. It makes you cringe, and makes you feel criminal. But you still feel lucky not to have experienced what Ashraf Khan did. Born in Pakistan, he runs a flourishing business in San Antonio, Texas. He mostly travels first class. On September 17, he boarded a Delta Airlines flight to Karachi to attend his brother's wedding. The captain came down the aisle and ordered Khan out. The reason: the captain "didn't feel" safe to have the Pakistani on the flight. "That haunts me every time I board an airplane," says Khan, who missed his brother's wedding.

It isn't just the man in the street who is in grip of this irrational fear—and distrust—of the foreigner. Krittika Ghosh, of the New York-based Asian American Legal Education & Defense Fund (aaldef), says the police too are responsible for perpetuating hate crimes and racial biases. In Brooklyn, they set upon a Pakistani teenager and bashed him mercilessly.

aaldef's Saurabh Sarkar finds it bewildering that though September 11 hijackers were all Arabs, a significant proportion of those detained in immigration and police sweeps are Pakistanis. "It's wrong to go about implementing laws in a fashion that selectively targets communities. This just scapegoats them for larger events," he says.

Columbia Univesity student Debargo Sanyal volunteered to work as a medical technician 10 blocks north of Ground Zero. And though he wasn't a victim of racial prejudices, many of his South Asian friends were. "They worked their hearts out helping victims and their families but that was no protection from racial slurs. They were very upset about it. Even some of my Hispanic friends have people shouting at them to 'go back home, you terrorist.'"

There's already fear among Asians about a possible racial backlash around the first anniversary of 9/11. "There will definitely be something," says Krittika, pointing out that there has been a rise in incidents of hate crime since July 4, American Independence Day.But Sanyal says he's determined to ensure he doesn't become a hostage to the prejudices of others. "I have not changed my life because that would mean it's OK to give in to fear," says the young public health student. "I'm not going to change my daily routine just because others are prejudiced. But I'll be smarter and more aware of my surroundings."

A year after September 11, it seems Americans are once again under attack. Only this time, it's truly from within.

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