Assault On California Sikh Man Investigated As Hate Crime

Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer holds a news conference on Tuesday, Oct 5, 2010 in Fresno, Calif. Police say an 8-year-old girl was abducted while playing outside a Fresno home by Gregorio Gonzalez. The girl manage... Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer holds a news conference on Tuesday, Oct 5, 2010 in Fresno, Calif. Police say an 8-year-old girl was abducted while playing outside a Fresno home by Gregorio Gonzalez. The girl managed to escape her captor when another driver cut him off in traffic. (AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian) MORE LESS
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Fresno, California police are investigating an early Saturday morning attack on a Sikh man as a hate crime, according to the Fresno Bee.

According to the Bee, Amrik Singh Bal was confronted by two white males while waiting alone on a street corner for his ride to work at 6:30 a.m. After attempting to cross the street to get away from the two men, who were shouting obscenities at him, they backed their car into Bal, knocking him to the ground. They then exited the vehicle and began beating the 68-year-old, striking him in the face and upper body.

The Bee reported that one of the suspects yelled “Why are you here?” during the assault.

Fresno police sergeant Greg Noll told the newspaper that his department launched a hate-crime investigation into the attack, which left Bal with a broken collar bone and abrasions on his nose and hand. The Bee reported that the Department of Homeland Security and FBI are assisting Fresno police in their efforts to find the suspects.

Ike Iqbal S. Grewal, a member of the Sikh Council of Central California, told the Bee that “Sikhs have been mistaken for terrorists and radicals and continue to suffer after 9/11.”

Though Sikhism and Islam are two distinct religions, the beard and turban traditionally worn by Sikh men, including Bal, make them particularly visible targets for religiously-motivated hate crimes.

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  1. Avatar for chammy chammy says:

    The Fresno area of California is like Pennsylvania’s Pennsyltucky. This is shameful. These stories make me ill.

  2. The beard and turban traditionally worn by Sikh men, including Bal, make them particularly visible targets for anti-Muslim crimes.

    Ahhhh, that makes it sound like the writer thinks Sikhs are a “kind of muslims”, they most definitely are not. It is a completely different religion.

  3. Undoubtedly California precinct captains in the Trump campaign.

  4. You think people who violently insist that all 1.5 billion Muslims are terrorists bent on the extermination of Christun Umerika and thus all ought to be deported/monitored/interned/exterminated are going to make such fine-grained, nuanced distinctions as recognizing that Sikhism is a totally different religion from Islam?

  5. This is disgusting. We are BETTER than this.

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