Like many oth­er com­mu­ni­ties, South Asians have long expe­ri­enced xeno­pho­bic rhetoric, bias, and vio­lence. Many of those who first immi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States were sub­ject­ed to anti-immi­grant rhetoric and dri­ven out of towns where they set­tled. After 1965, South Asians often expe­ri­enced bias in the work­place includ­ing the glass ceil­ing and dis­crim­i­na­tion against those who had accents. South Asian work­ing class immi­grants who moved to urban areas also faced tar­get­ing and alien­ation in the 1980s. For exam­ple, dur­ing this time, a hate group called the Dot­busters com­mit­ted numer­ous acts of hate, such as assault and van­dal­ism, against Indi­an immi­grants in Jer­sey City, New Jer­sey. Two of these assaults were so vio­lent that one vic­tim did not sur­vive and anoth­er suf­fered seri­ous brain dam­age.

Since Sep­tem­ber 11th, South Asian, Sikh, Mus­lim, and Arab Amer­i­cans have been the tar­gets of numer­ous hate crimes, as well as employ­ment dis­crim­i­na­tion, bul­ly­ing, harass­ment, and pro­fil­ing. In addi­tion, places of wor­ship have been van­dal­ized and attacked, includ­ing the trag­ic shoot­ing of the Sikh gur­d­wara in Oak Creek, Wis­con­sin and the numer­ous alleged hate crimes in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty that fol­lowed.

SAALT, along with our allies have been track­ing hate crimes against South Asian, Sikh, Mus­lim and Arab com­mu­ni­ties fol­low­ing the Paris attacks. This is a live doc­u­ment and is updat­ed dai­ly.

If you would like to report an inci­dent, we ask that you reach out to our allies at Stop AAPI Hate or OCA at this link. At present, SAALT is avail­able to assist com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with spe­cif­ic trans­la­tion and legal requests, through our work with the South Asian Rapid Response Net­work. As a non-legal advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion, SAALT is here to con­nect com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with allies who can pro­vide spe­cif­ic resources.

In addi­tion, around the coun­try, xeno­pho­bic and anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ment has increas­ing­ly per­me­at­ed the media and polit­i­cal sphere. For decades, African Amer­i­cans and Lati­nos were sub­ject­ed to this rhetoric, but more recent­ly, South Asian, Sikh, Mus­lim, and Arab Amer­i­cans have increas­ing­ly become the tar­gets. These ver­bal attacks include xeno­pho­bic rhetoric aimed at South Asian polit­i­cal can­di­dates as well as a more gen­er­al por­tray­al of our com­mu­ni­ty as dan­ger­ous through state­ments by gov­ern­ment offi­cials and the media.

SAALT RESOURCES ON HATE CRIMES AND XENOPHOBIA

• Under Sus­pi­cion, Under Attack: Xeno­pho­bic Polit­i­cal Rhetoric and Hate Vio­lence against South Asian, Mus­lim, Sikh, Hin­du, Mid­dle East­ern, and Arab Com­mu­ni­ties in the Unit­ed States (2014)
• SAALT State­ment on Trag­ic Shoot­ing in Kansas City(April 2014)
• Huff­in­g­ton Post: Safe Com­mu­ni­ties Start With Each of Us by Deepa Iyer (Jan­u­ary 2013)
• SAALT Sup­ports New Cur­ricu­lum for Teach­ers and Edu­ca­tors on Bul­ly­ing and Xeno­pho­bia (2013)
• SAALT Rec­om­men­da­tions for Enhanced Report­ing and Col­lec­tion of Hate Crimes to the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion (Decem­ber 2012)
• NJ.com: Wis­con­sin Sikh Tem­ple Shoot­ing Recall New Jer­sey’s Dot­busters by Deepa Iyer (Sep­tem­ber 2012)
• SAALT State­ment of the Record for the Sen­ate Hate Crime Hear­ing (Sep­tem­ber 2012)
• Hate Crimes: A Quick Infor­ma­tion Sheet for South Asians (Sep­tem­ber 2012)
• SAALT Let­ter Regard­ing U.S. Sen­ate Can­di­date Pete Hoek­stra’s Anti-Chi­nese Ad Web­site (Feb­ru­ary 2012)
• SAALT Let­ter Regard­ing Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date Newt Gin­grich’s Com­ments on Mus­lim Can­di­dates (Jan­u­ary 2012)
• SAALT’s Let­ter Regard­ing Tenessee State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Rick Wom­ick­’s Com­ments Regard­ing Mus­lims in the Mil­i­tary (Novem­ber 2011)
• SAALT Let­ter Regard­ing Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date Newt Gin­grich’s Com­ments on Mus­lim Can­di­dates (Novem­ber 2011)
• Joint Res­o­lu­tion from Con­gress­men John Cony­ers, Hansen Clarke, and Andre Car­son on Coun­ter­ing Rhetoric and Vio­lence Against Mus­lim, Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ties (2011)
• Dis­crim­i­na­tion Unde­terred: Xeno­pho­bic Rhetoric, Pro­fil­ing, and Dis­crim­i­na­tion Affect­ing South Asian, Mus­lim, and Sikh Com­mu­ni­ties in the Unit­ed States — Arti­cle in Satyam: The Chica­go-Kent Col­lege of Law’s Jour­nal on South Asian and the Law (2011)
• From Maca­cas to Tur­ban Top­pers: The Rise in Xeno­pho­bic and Racist Rhetoric in Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Dis­course (Octo­ber 2010)
• List of Anti-Park51 State­ments Made by Elect­ed Offi­cials and Polit­i­cal Can­di­dates (Sep­tem­ber 2010)
• Let­ter to Amer­i­cans for Job Secu­ri­ty regard­ing Xeno­pho­bic Out­sourc­ing Ad (May 2010)
• SAALT State­ment on Pas­sage of Hate Crimes Bill (2009)
• Amer­i­can Back­lash: Ter­ror­ist Bring War Home in More Ways Than One Report on hate crimes and bias inci­dents against the Arab, Mid­dle East­ern, Mus­lim, Sikh, and South Asian com­mu­ni­ty fol­low­ing 9/11 (2001)
• FAQ about the Matthew Shep­ard Hate Crimes Pre­ven­tion Act (2009)
• Civ­il Rights Tran­si­tion Paper (Decem­ber 2008)
• Address­ing and Respond­ing to Bias to Out­sourc­ing Fact­sheet
• Hate Crimes: Com­mu­ni­ty Wide Impact Fact­sheet

Ally Organizations

• Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions
• Japan­ese Amer­i­cans Cit­i­zens League
• Orga­ni­za­tion of Chi­nese Amer­i­cans
• Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Coun­cil (MPAC)
• South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter (SPLC)
• Sikh Coali­tion
• Sikh Amer­i­can Legal Defense and Edu­ca­tion Fund (SALDEF)
• UNITED SIKHS