FRESNO, California, USA—The Sikh Coalition, the largest Sikh American civil rights organization in the United States, Wednesday commended Fresno Police for quickly arresting a suspect in the vicious beating of Mr. Piara Singh, an 81-year-old Sikh grandfather, this past Sunday outside a Gurdwara (Sikh House of Worship) in Fresno, California.
Mr. Singh, who remains hospitalized, sustained injuries to his head and a punctured lung after being beaten with a steel rod. The suspected assailant was arrested shortly after the attack.
“We are grateful to Fresno Police for rapidly responding to this tragedy,” said Simran Kaur, Advocacy Manager for the Sikh Coalition. “We hope that Mr. Piara Singh recovers fully and quickly and that his attacker is prosecuted under state and federal hate crime laws.”
The attack on Mr. Piara Singh is only the latest in a string of attacks on Sikh Americans in recent years. In the last two years alone, two elderly Sikhs were murdered in Elk Grove, California; a Sikh cab driver was assaulted in Sacramento, California; a Sikh transit worker was assaulted in New York City; a Sikh cab driver was assaulted in Seattle, Washington; a Sikh business owner was shot and injured in Port Orange, Florida; and six Wisconsin Sikhs were murdered by an attacker with known ties to hate groups in one of the worst attacks on an American place of worship since the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Earlier this year, in response to persistent attacks on Sikh Americans, 135 members of the U.S. Congress asked the FBI to begin tracking hate crimes against Sikhs, the way the agency does for other communities, to strengthen diagnostic and deterrence efforts. And just last month, a bipartisan American Sikh Congressional Caucus was launched in the U.S. Congress, resolving to address bias-motivated violence against Sikh Americans.
“According to Sikh Coalition surveys, Sikhs are potentially hundreds of times more likely than their fellow Americans to experience hate crimes,” said Rajdeep Singh, Policy Director for the Sikh Coalition. “We need to start focusing on prevention. This is a crisis, and we need all hands on deck to build a less hateful society.”
