Daily Times

WASHINGTON: Indians held a protest outside the White House on Sunday, asking US President Trump to end his ‘hate’ speech.

A lawyer, Vindhya Adapa, blames Trump’s ‘hate’ narrative for the recent hate crimes against brown-skinned people.

Somya Shehsadri, a doctor who migrated to the US when she was seven-years-old, along with her family, friends and neighbours, stood outside the president’s residence to inform him of their reservations about his policies.

“I never imagined in all my life I will be outside the White House one Sunday afternoon defending myself being American,” Sheshadri said. “I am an Indian American, I am brown-skinned, have a Sanskrit name, and knew at some point of my life I would be perceived to be the ‘other’.”

“It hasn’t happened to me yet,” Vindhya said. “But I cannot sit back and let it happen.”

Her father, one of the organizers of the protest, said that this was the Indian community’s attempt to “show our face”.

“Let Americans see us as Indians, and not mistake us for anyone else which is not to justify their targeting of Muslims or Middle-Easterners,” he said.

The group brought a petition for the President who, like most weekends, was in Palm Beach, Florida that requested his “kind intervention in this matter and take steps first to punish the culprits under federal hate crimes law, second to allay the fears of the Indian American community and show your support, and finally to take remediation steps to eliminate the hate.”

“A message should go out to the people of this country from the administration that ‘no citizen should take the law into their hands and it will not be tolerated by the government’,” it added.

The demonstration comes after a series of “mistaken identity” attacks where Indians [Hindus, Sikhs] have been targeted because they looked ‘Muslim’.

Earlier this month, a Sikh man was shot and wounded in Washington State by an attacker who approached him in his driveway and told him to leave the country. Hate crime-tracking groups say assailants have occasionally mistaken Sikhs for Muslims, who have also been victimised in religiously motivated crimes.