It’s time the Government ended its silence on Sikh hate crime victims

On 15 September 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station owner, was arranging flowers outside his family business in Arizona. He had just returned from Costco, where he purchased some American flags and donated money to a fund for victims of 9/11. Moments later, he was shot dead. Sodhi, a turbaned Sikh, goes down in history as the first person killed in retribution for the Al Qaeda terror attacks. On his arrest, his murderer Frank Roque told police, ‘I’m a patriot and American.’ Fifteen years on, Sikhs, both in the US and Britain, are acutely aware that hate does not discriminate. And Sikhs, like Muslims, continue to face the backlash to the Islamist war on the West.

That’s why ‘Action Against Hate’ – the Government’s four-year plan of how to tackle hate crime – is something of a damp squib. ‘Hate crime of any kind, directed against any community, race or religion has absolutely no place in our society’, declares Amber Rudd in the introduction to the report.