Public ignorance aggravates effect of hate crimes

Just before Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) Pride Week and Hate Crimes Awareness Week, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) sadly mishandled a case of homophobia, exemplifying the many reasons why these two weeks of consciousness-raising were organized. Ifti Nasim, an openly gay Pakistani immigrant, suffered a verbal and physical attack at the hands of Salman Aftab, a fellow Pakistani Muslim. While Nasim was dining out with friends, Aftab, who had joined the group, began to verbally abuse him about being gay. After about 10 minutes of harassment, which included assaults on Nasim's Muslim identity, Aftab said, "I'm going to stab you up the ass to tell God I'm getting rid of at least one sinner! I want to clean up the planet after your type!"

ERIN I. LEWIS/YH

Aftab then disappeared to the kitchen and returned with a large knife, which he pointed at Nasim, declaring a jihad against him and all gay Muslims. After Aftab tried to stab Nasim, a restaurant employee restrained Aftab while Nasim called the police. When the police arrived and spoke with both Aftab and Nasim, they told the latter that the whole matter appeared to be simply an "ethnic problem" between two Pakistanis. The police sided against Nasim, telling him that he was drunk, and then refusing him the option of a breathalyzer test to prove his sobriety. Although the police arrested Aftab, they recorded the incident as a misdemeanor and refused to recognize it as a hate crime. Aftab is now out on bail.

In the FBI's Hate Crime Collection Guidelines, a hate crime is defined as "a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin." Given this definition, it is unquestionable that Nasim suffered a "criminal offense" motivated by Aftab's bias against his religious and sexual orientation.

In fact, I would argue that Nasim was a victim of multiple hate crimes—committed by his assailant, the individual policemen, and a culturally insensitive police system too uninformed to realize that hatred and intolerance can exist between members of the same ethnic and religious groups. Because of the ignorance of these law enforcement agents, the man who attacked Nasim is now out on bail, again threatening to use a weapon to enforce divine wrath against homosexuals. The security, happiness, and lives of many gay and lesbian South Asians in Chicago are likewise threatened because of the police's racist handling of what is unquestionably a hate crime and their incredibly flawed assumption that harmony exists within ethnic communities.

I wish to ask the members of the CPD a question: if a Caucasian gay man were attacked physically and verbally by another Caucasian man, would you have hesitated to label the incident a hate crime? If one human being is assaulted—physically, verbally, emotionally, or otherwise—by another human being in a manner threatening to his or her person, aren't the police responsible for stopping the perpetrator and ensuring the safety of the victim regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation?

I am also concerned because this case was not publicized nationally to the degree that, for example, the Matthew Sheperd case was. Does it take a hate crime against a homosexual white man to motivate activists? Why is it that the only groups that seem to know about this hate crime are South Asian and Asian-American groups on campus and Asian/South Asian LGBT activist organizations outside of Yale? The lack of attention given to this event by the general public may highlight an assumption that non-South Asian communities are not affected by hate crimes against gay South Asians. It further perpetuates the common belief (within and outside of South Asian communities) that there are essentially no openly gay South Asians, which is a blatant falsehood.

It should not take a reported assault to spark action; the battle for the human rights of gay people of all ethnicities and backgrounds should be an ongoing effort. It is only through concerted action and equal attention to gay people in all ethnic communities that activists and the general public can eliminate the greatest threats to gays and lesbians of different ethnic backgrounds: apathy, ignorance, and simplistic assumptions about harmony in immigrant and minority communities held by law enforcement agents in America. These flaws, crimes in themselves, cannot go unnoticed and unopposed.

Sunita Puri, DC '02, is the vice president of the South Asian Society at Yale.

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