INDIANS KILLED IN TRUMP’S US
Since February, three Indians have been killed in racially motivated attacks and alleged hate crimes
February 22: Indian engineer
Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed and his friend Alok Madasani injured when a man opened fire at them in a Kansas bar.
The alleged shooter, a US Navy veteran named Adam Purinton, apparently thought the two were from the Middle East and was heard calling them “terrorists” before telling them to “get out of my country”. Ian Grillot, a 24-year-old Caucasian-American construction worker, was injured while trying to stop the assailant.
March 2: Harnish Patel, a 43-year-old store owner in South Carolina, was shot dead outside his home. It is not yet clear if this was a hate crime.
March 4: Deep Rai, a 39-year-old Sikh, was shot outside his home in Kent, Washington, by a masked gunman who allegedly shouted to him to “go back to your own country”.
There are concerns that US President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is giving free reign to extremist elements
Trump took office on January 20, winning the Oval Office on the back of an 18-month-long campaign that hinged on the idea that he would ‘Make America Great Again’ by wresting it back from ‘outsiders’ and by demanding that American jobs be given to ‘American people’
Entire communities have marched against his exclusionist ideas in cities across the US, declaring that all Americans are immigrants, and that its melting pot culture is among its greatest strengths In universities, too, there have been efforts to stress that the culture of inclusion is important to the academic community.