iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
The death of a Sikh man, 24-year-old Sanraj Singh due to gunshot wounds in Alberta province comes latest in the series of Sikhs killings in Canada.
Police said they responded to reports of gunshots in the area of 51 Street and 13 Avenue of Edmonton, capital of Alberta, at approximately 8:40 p.m. on December 3. Upon arrival, they located a male sitting in a vehicle in medical distress.
Singh was given CPR by the police until paramedics arrived and declared him dead.
The Edmonton Medical Examiner on December 7 completed an autopsy on the deceased, and identified him as Sanraj Singh, 24. “The cause of death was gunshot wounds, and the manner of death is homicide,” an Edmonton Police statement said.
Homicide investigators have released images of a vehicle of interest that was seen leaving the area at the time of the homicide. They are requesting anyone with information about the vehicle or shooting to contact them.
Canada has been rocked by a spate of Sikh killings in the months starting November. Harpreet Kaur, a 40 year-old Sikh woman died on December 7 after being stabbed multiple times at her home in Surrey, British Columbia. The incident came just two days after 21 year-old Pawanpreet Kaur, another Canadian-Sikh woman, was shot dead outside a gas station in Mississauga on December 3.
Last month, 18 year-old Sikh teen Mehakpreet Sethi was stabbed to death at the parking lot of a high school in Surrey.
The national homicide rate in Canada rose by three per cent in 2021, according to Statistics Canada with police services reporting 788 homicides in the country.
“These incidents have a significant impact, not only on the family and friends of the victim, but the entire community,” Sgt Timothy Pierotti of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team had told the media after Harpreet Kaur’s killing.
Not just Canada, the United States is also seeing a spate of violent incidents against the Sikh community.
Violence against Sikh community members in the US has grown to alarming levels. This concerning fact was highlighted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in its most recent annual data on hate crimes and bias incidents, covering the calendar year of 2021.
Published on December 12, the trends in the recent data confirm the Sikh Coalition’s worst fears. “Over the last 20 years and more we have determined that our community remains uniquely vulnerable to the risk of targeted hate,” the Sikh Coalition said.
The Sikh Coalition was founded over 20 years ago in response to an increase in bias, bigotry, and backlash against the Sikh community across the United States. It is a civil rights organization working to combat and prevent anti-Sikh hate.
The FBI data reveals that between 2020 and 2021, anti-Sikh hate crimes increased by 140 percent, from 89 incidents to 214, the single greatest number of hate crimes documented since the FBI started reporting on anti-Sikh hate crimes in 2015. According to the FBI’s data, Sikhs were among the top two most targeted faith groups for hate crimes across the country in 2021, behind the Jewish American community.
The data released by the FBI proves that contrary to the rising number of anti-Sikh hate violence, nationally there was a 12 percent decrease in reported hate crimes between 2020-2021. However, this is also the fourth consecutive year that there has been a decline in law enforcement agencies participating in reporting hate crime data to the FBI.
This significant decrease is likely due, at least in part, to a planned transition to a new reporting system, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), that law enforcement agencies were required to transition to by January 1, 2022. A significant number of large agencies–including those in high-population areas like New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Jose–did not make the transition in time to be included in the 2020-2021 FBI dataset. Whether due to the NIBRS transition or other factors, there was an approximately 22 percent decrease in voluntary reporting by law enforcement agencies compared to the previous dataset.
