New York: A 48-year-old man in the United States has been charged with hate crime after he pummeled an Asian man in the face screaming 'We are white power', 'Go back to your country! What are you doing here?', police said today.
Steven Zatorski, stormed up to the 30-year-old victim on Third Avenue in New York and started kicking him on Monday, police said.
"Go back to your country! What are you doing here?", Zatorski, who lives in a million-dollar condominium in the Flatiron District, screamed at him, police was quoted as saying by the New York Daily.
"We are white power," Zatorski shouted as he punched the victim in the face," according to police. The two had not spoken before Zatorski attacked, they said.
Witnesses to the beatdown alerted a nearby New York Police Department transit cop, who arrested the alleged attacker. He was charged with assault as a hate crime and was being held at Rikers Island on USD 5,000 bail, according to court records. The victim was treated at the scene.
The incidents of hate crimes and harassment around the country have increased since the election of President Donald Trump. As many as 140 incidents of hate violence and 67 instances of xenophobic political rhetoric have been reported in the US against the South-Asian community during the 2016 election cycle, a report by South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), a leading national South Asian American advocacy organisation, had said.
