FBI to track hate crimes against Sikhs, Hindus, Arabs

Washington, March 26: Six US lawmakers along with leading advocacy groups have welcomed the inclusion of Sikh, Hindu, and Arab American communities in the Department of Justice’s hate crimes tracking effort. This is the fil step in the long-fought effort to encourage the US federal government to filly begin tracking and quantifying hate crimes against these at-risk communities, the lawmakers said at an event on Capitol Hill Wednesday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently updated its hate crimes database and FBI training manual in order to start tracking hate crimes committed against these groups - that system is now fully operatiol. Ami Bera, the lone Indian-American member of the US House of Representatives, along with fellow House members Joe Crowley, Bill Pascrell, Mike Honda, Grace Meng and John Garamendi attended the event. These lawmakers led a Congressiol effort to encourage the Department of Justice and FBI to document hate crimes against Sikh, Hindu, and Arab Americans. They spearheaded numerous letters to the DOJ and FBI and introduced a Congressiol resolution in the wake of the tragic August 2012 massacre in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and submitting testimony urging action on hate crimes. In 2011, two elderly Sikh Americans, Gurmej Atwal and Surinder Singh, were shot and killed while out for a walk in Elk Grove, California, a part of Bera’s constituency, in a suspected hate crime that is still unsolved. (ians)