Senate Hate Crimes Hearing Centers on Sikh Temple Massacre Belief
Senate Hate Crimes Hearing Centers on Sikh Temple Massacre Belief Blog Blogs
Many Sikhs have lobbied the federal government to track hate crimes that are committed specifically against them.
“I have filmed, chronicled, combated hate crimes against this community for 11 years,” Valerie Kaur, a Sikh filmmaker and community activist, said in testimony at the hearing.
“In the aftermath of Oak Creek, reporters came up to me and asked me, ‘How many hate crimes have there been? How many hate murders have there been?’ ” Kaur said. “And I couldn’t tell them … because the government currently does not track hate crimes against Sikhs at all.”
Harpreet Singh Saini, whose mother, Paramjit Kaur Singh, died in the Wisconsin shooting, told the subcommittee, “I came here today to ask government to give my mother the dignity of being a statistic.
“She was an American,” said Saini, an 18-year-old college student who’s majoring in law enforcement. “And this was not our American dream.”
More than 400 people from across the country filled the Senate gallery, and a second room for overflow, to watch the hearing.