"We Are Americans Too": Hate Crimes Report Issued on 9/11 Anniversary

September 11, 2006

Source: Times of India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1980135,curpg-2.cms

On September 11, 2006 Times of India reported, "Sikhs and Muslims in the United States were most affected by hate crimes and discrimination after 9/11 while Hindus remained largely untouched by the backlash, a report on the fall-out on South Asian communities from the terror attack on America has said.

The main findings of the study by a Harvard University project showed that Sikh American respondents, particularly those with turbans, were most affected by hate crimes while Pakistani Muslim respondents were the most affected by government policies and programmes after 9/11, including Special Registration and the USA Patriot Act... Some 35% of Pakistani Muslim respondents considered leaving the United States because of the hostile post-9/11 environment, the report titled ‘We are Americans Too: A Comparative Study of the Effects of 9/11 on South Asian Communities', released on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, said. And 83% of Sikh respondents said they or someone they knew personally had experienced a hate crime or incident.

The study, undertaken by Discrimination and National Security Initiative (DNSI), an affiliate of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, was based on interviews conducted over two years with the South Asian community in the US DNSI was founded after 9/11 to examine the mistreatment of minority communities during times of military action or national crisis... 'We now live in an era in which individuals who are or are perceived to be Arab or Muslim, including South Asians, are viewed with suspicion because of their religious background and/or the colour of their skin,' June Han, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University who authored the report, said."