April 18, 2013.
In an incident that has echoes to the period after the 9-11 attacks in New York City, a Bangladeshi man was assaulted by four men in The Bronx on the mistaken assumption that he was an Arab.
The New York Post reported that 30-year-old Abdullah Faruque, who was born in Bangladesh but grew up in The Bronx, was having dinner at a Bronx restaurant on Monday night when three or four Hispanic men apparently wanted revenge for the Boston Marathon bombings which occurred earlier in the day (presumably they had already ascertained that the Boston blasts were perpetrated by Arabs or Muslims).
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| Abdullah Faruque (Credit) |
“One of the guys asked if I was Arab,” Faruque told the Post. “I just shook my head, said like, ‘Yeah, whatever.’ I didn’t even know that [the] Boston [bombing] happened because I had a busy day.”
As Faruque, a network engineer, turned to return to his meal, one of the other men said: “Yeah, he’s a f--king Arab,” leading to a brutal pummeling that dislocating Faruque’s left shoulder and left him semiconscious.
“Before I could grab the door, they started swinging at me,” Faruque.
“I’ve been jumped before. If you can’t win, you back up, you try to protect yourself.”
Only after he returned home and learned of the Boston tragedy from the TV news did Faruque understand.
“I saw the news, and then it hits me: That’s why I got jumped,” he said.
The New York Police Department is probing the beating as a hate crime.
People from South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, are sometimes targeted for violence and abuse by people who mistake them for Arabs whenever news of terror attacks emerge in the media.
This situation was particularly dangerous for turbaned Sikhs in the wake of 9-11, leading to at least one murder and innumerable assaults.
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Comment: It brings me no joy to say that I absolutely expected this would happen. And sadly there will more of the same.
So, apparently even Hispanic men will do the work of the empire and beat you down if you look like an Arab/Muslim. I am not really surprised.
Elsewhere, profiling brown suspects is now being done online by amateur sleuths at Reddit and 4Chan. See here.
And then see Gawker's "The Post’s ‘Person of Interest’ Is a Local High-School Track Runner" (April 18) for a slap-down of the racist idiocy behind racially profiling suspects via online pictures/footage.
Onward!
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