The murky, dirty world of the terrorist claims two groups of victims:
-
The innocents who die as random victims of bombs, bullets and hijacked aircraft
-
The innocents who suffer because their nationality, skin colour or religion is the same as that of the killers
After any terrorist incident, fear spreads easily. The urge to find scapegoats often finds release in verbal or physical attacks on people perceived as foreigners. Despite calls for religious and racial tolerance, bigotry often wins.
Amnesty International, the worldwide human rights organization, has compiled dossiers of retribution attacks in various countries. Naturally, 9/11 features at the top of the list. In the week after the World Trade Center towers fell, the Council on American-Islamic Relations received reports of more than 540 attacks on Arab-Americans, many directed at schoolchildren. In the same period, more than 200 Sikhs were victims of racist abuse.
Bombs, beatings and bigotry
Dozens of mosques and Hindu temples were fire-bombed or vandalized, and some schools and colleges forced to close because of death threats, bomb threats or fears for students' safety. The catalogue of individual incidents was sobering:
-
An Egyptian-born Christian shopkeeper was shot dead in Los Angeles
-
A Sikh petrol station owner was shot and killed in Arizona
-
A Pakistani man was killed in Dallas and a Yemeni-American shot dead in Detroit
-
A 20-year-old student in Boston was stabbed three times by assailants yelling anti-Arab abuse
-
In Laramie, Wyoming, a woman and her children were chased from a supermarket by angry shoppers screaming at her to go back to her own country
Although local communities in several states showed solidarity with their Muslim neighbors, it was inevitably the attacks that made the headlines.
The violence was mirrored across Europe:
-
In the UK, mosques were vandalized in London, Manchester, Oldham, Southend, Glasgow and Belfast
-
Intimidation against Muslims led to the closure of three schools in London
-
An Afghan taxi driver was left paralysed from the neck down after being dragged from his taxi in London and beaten by three men
-
In Swindon, Wiltshire, an Asian woman was beaten with a baseball bat by two men
-
In the Netherlands, police recorded more than 20 attacks on Muslim targets in the ten days after September 11
-
In Poland, a mosque in Gdansk was stoned by youths
-
In Denmark, police arrested a man about to throw petrol bombs at a mosque in Copenhagen
And on the other side of the world, in Australia, a school bus carrying Muslim children in Brisbane was pelted with stones and bottles. Mosques were fire-bombed and at least one burned down.
All the attacks were widely condemned, and Amnesty International welcomed statements made by many governments and politicians to combat such unthinking bigotry. But it observed: "However, there is a danger that as the world's political leaders focus on combating 'terrorism' from abroad, a climate is engendered in which racism and xenophobia can flourish." It added: "In a climate of fear and perceived external threat, it is essential that the authorities step up measurers to ensure that people from all communities, whether citizens or not, are equally protected."
