Sikh Coalition says 60% of turban-wearing boys are harassed in schools
NEW YORK: A school day which started innocuously in Richmond Hill High School in Queens for Jagmohan Singh Premi, 18, quickly turned into a nightmare last week when his classmate tried to rip off his turban and attacked him, leaving him with a fractured cheek.
“I only go to school to learn,” said a shy Premi who seems perplexed at the attack which Sikhs here are calling a hate crime. The classmate punched Premi in the face while holding a key between his knuckles, inflicting an orbital fracture and welts. The 15-year-old attacker whose name has been withheld has been charged with felony assault and harassment.
Disturbingly, the Sikh Coalition which has taken up cudgels on behalf of Premi says the attack was not a one-off incident; the attacker had been calling the Sikh boy ‘dirty’ and a ‘terrorist’ for months in their English as a second language class.
“Jagmohan’s tormentor has a long history of harassing him at school. He has pulled his beard in class and squeezed his jurdha. He made fun of his patka, asking Jagmohan if he ever washed his hair and demanded that Jagmohan remove his turban,” said Amardeep Singh, executive director of the Sikh Coalition.
Bias attacks against Sikhs spiked after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Making Our Voices Heard, a report released by the Sikh Coalition in April, found that more than half of the city’s Sikh students have been harassed in school because of their religion.
“More than 60% of the Sikh students we surveyed suffered bias-based harassment or violence in city schools. The Coalition’s report specifically cited Richmond Hill High School as a “problem school” for Sikh children,” said the organisation. The latest attack has attracted US media attention and the Daily News reported that “at long last the Education Department may be waking up” to the problem. Chancellor Klein is said to have personally apologised to the assaulted student in a private meeting.
