London: US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump's campaign, which has already offended the Muslim and African American communities, now seems to have added Sikhs to its growing list. At Trump's rally in Iowa, a Sikh protester sporting a red turban was escorted out for unfurling a large 'stop hate' banner.
"He wasn't wearing one of those hats, was he?" jibed the billionaire, in reference to the Trump baseball cap worn by supporters. "And he never will!" Trump said after the protestor was removed from the rally.
According to an article in the Telegraph by communications specialist J Singh-Sohal, social media activists have swarmed on Trump, accusing him of mocking the Sikh protestor that seems to fan the sheer amount of hate violence Sikhs experience in modern America.
Following the 9/11 attacks, the Sikh community in the US has become targeted because of their physical identity.
The first casualty was 52-year-old American Sikh migrant Balbir Singh Sodhi who was murdered outside his petrol station in Mesa, Arizona. The gunman, Frank Silva Roque, had wanted revenge for the al Qaeda attacks and had bragged about what he had done during his arrest, calling himself a 'patriotic'.
Since then, there have been many more attacks on Sikhs who have been mistaken for being terrorists.
The most horrific incident occurred when forty-year-old white supremacist, Wade Michael Page, went on a shooting spree at Gurudwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin killing six Sikhs.
The abuse event went online as during the Paris attacks, a photo of Veerender Singh Jubbal holding an iPad was taken from his Facebook profile and photo shopped to make him look like a suicide bomber.
