Washington: According to a recent FBI report, Sikhs were the second most victimised religious group in hate crimes in the US in 2021 behind Jews, while Hindus and Muslims accounted for 1% and 9. 5% of the 1,005 offences reported in that year.
There were 214 (21.3%) hate crimes against Sikhs and 10 against Hindus, according to FBI’s annual data. Anti-Semitic crimes were the highest at 31.9%, while the count for Catholics was 6.1%.
The shooting by a former worker at a FedEx plant in Indianapolis on April 16, 2021 was one of the crimes. Four Sikh employees of the facility were among the eight people who were shot.
Sikhs who first began arriving in the US in the late 1800s are a small religious minority. American Sikhs have in the past been targeted in racist attacks, which escalated after the 9/11 terrorist strike in 2001.
Entrepreneur Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed at his Arizona gas station four days after the September 11 attacks by a man who declared he was “going to go out and shoot some towel-heads” and mistook him for an Arab Muslim.
At a gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, on August 5, 2012, a white supremacist shot six Sikhs and injured four others. Being the largest attack on the community in American history, requests were made for safety protocols to be in place at around 300 gurdwaras nationwide and to increase knowledge and understanding of their religion.
FBI hadn’t tracked hate crimes specifically against Sikhs until 2015, according to a report, and many local law enforcement agencies fail to record bias attacks comprehensively.