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Community organization vows to fight all manifestations of ‘state sanctioned hate’.
Even as 2019 saw the highest number of hate crime murders in the US since 1991, antiSikh incidents saw a slight decrease after a record 200 percent increase in 2018, according to a new FBI report.
With a total of 7,314 reported hate crime incidents, FBI’s 2019 Hate Crime Statistics Report shows a slight decrease from 2018, a leading community advocacy organization noted.
“Yet we know that communities of color, LGBTQ folks, and people with disabilities continue to be targets of hate violence by white supremacist individuals and institutions,” the South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) said.
While crimes motivated by anti Muslim sentiment decreased, with 176 reported, overall hate crime incidents targeting Muslims and those perceived as Muslims has been up since 2015, it said.
SAALT said along with its partners it had tracked 348 incidents of xenophobic or Islamophobic rhetoric, and 733 incidents of hate violence targeting Muslims and Asian Americans, and those perceived as Muslim or Asian American in the last five years,
Racially motivated hate crime incidents made up the majority of hate crimes reported in 2019, with nearly half of the incidents motivated by antiBlack racism, SAALT noted citing the FBI report.
The number of antiBlack hate crimes was the highest it’s been since 2011.
SAALT said hate violence targeting South Asian, Arabs, and Muslims is fueled by state sanctioned white supremacy.
“Policies and practices like the Muslim Ban, family separation, and ongoing police violence endanger our communities because they embolden white supremacists,” it said.
“From the constant vandalizing of mosques, harassment of Muslim women, to the targeting of South Asians in their own neighborhoods, we have seen the very real and constant impact of this violence,” the community organization said.
SAALT said it was “committed to advocating for policy and community based solutions that address hate violence from its root cause — by fighting all the manifestations of state sanctioned hate.”
READ MORE:
SAALT calls for complete overhaul of US immigration system (November 17, 2020)
SAALT September Hate Report documents hate violence, racism and Islamophobia (October 28, 2019)