#AsianHate Continues To Rise – Sikh Man Attacked In Brooklyn For ‘Looking Different’
As stories of #AsianHate continue to grow, we bring you this story with a heavy heart. Not because a Sikh man was attacked. But because in a time that we all are craving for humanity, these attacks are becoming more and more common. Are people really losing their humane side?
Sumit Ahluwalia, 32, of Astoria said his assailant was fuelled by racial hatred, according to a report on New York Daily News website.
He was attacked with a hammer by a Black man who shouted at him “I don’t like you” and “You’re not the same skin” at a hotel in Brooklyn.
Sumit Ahluwalia says the man spit in his face and said he didn’t like him because of the color of his skin before hitting him in the head with a hammer #Sikh #indian @CBSNewYork #nyc #Brooklyn @NYCMayor @NYPDnews pic.twitter.com/63vyFchddl
— Kiran Dhillon (@KiranDhillonTV) May 1, 2021
Video footage released by news channels shows that on April 26th the assailant walked into Quality Inn in Brownsville, Brooklyn around 8 am and started shouting while the front desk lady asked him if he needed help. When Ahluwalia stepped up to intervene, the assailant ran towards him, putting his hand in his pocket, and then attacked him with a hammer.
Police have released pictures of the suspect, who is still being sought.
Advocacy group The Sikh Coalition said its legal team is providing free legal services to Ahluwalia.
The tragic incident comes as the US has witnessed a recent wave of anti-Asian hate crimes during this pandemic.
Eight people, including four Sikhs, were killed in a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis just last month.
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In March last year, a man stabbed two Asian American children – aged 2 and 6 – and their father at Sam’s Club in Texas because “he thought the family was Chinese, and infecting people with the coronavirus.”
A group of Democratic Senators in May last year said there has been a surge in hate crime against Asian-Americans amid coronavirus pandemic and had urged the Trump administration to take concrete steps to arrest the spike.
The onus now lies on the Biden administration to undo the poison Trump had succeeded in injecting and to make sure that such attacks are curtailed. Our hopes of finding better acceptance with Kamala Harris’s Blindian heritage seem to be dwindling in the face of the continuing #AsianHate.
