GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT 129
outside of his gas station when a bullet from Roque s gun, in a drive-by shoot-
ing, hit him in the chest and killed him instantly.
Sikhs are a rather small but well-organized religious community in the
United States. Although Frank Roque was convicted for first-degree murder,
according to Manjit Singh, president of the Sikh Mediawatch and Resource
Task Force (SMART), with their main breadwinner gone, the Sodhi family has
suffered a great deal since his death. According to Manjit Singh:
This honest and hard-working man was killed simply because of the way he
looked. We hope this conviction would shed light on the persisting problem
of hate crimes, which are rooted in sheer ignorance and intimidate entire
communities.
SMART has noticed an increase in hate crimes with tragic consequences
since the war in Iraq. A Sikh college student and his Caucasian girlfriend were
pelted with rocks while returning from an evening class in Jersey City. A Sikh
woman traveling in a subway in New York was shouted at,   You Moslem
bitch. Didn t your man. . .?  According to a report by the Sikh Coalition
(www.sikhcoalition.org), two Sikh teenagers were attacked in the evening of
March 3, 2004 in Lodi, New Jersey. Their turbans were removed and their
hair was cut with a pair of scissors. A Sikh gentleman was shouted at and
publicly insulted by a flight attendant while flying on a commercial flight.
According to a story in the Observer-Tribune (September 29, 2003), Handsdip
Bindar, an executive vice president of Innov8 Computer Solutions, a software
firm in Newark, planned to visit family in Ohio over Thanksgiving. He took a
Delta flight from Newark and changed to an Atlantic Coast Airlines flight in
Cincinnati. He was reading a magazine in the plane when the flight attendant,
Janet Thomas, suspicious of him because of his looks (full beard and a large
turban), came to him and literally shouted at him. One witness, Wayne Hill of
Springboro, Ohio, said he overheard the attendant telling passengers that as long
as she was in control of the passenger cabin, she had no intention of whatever
happened in the past happening all over again. She indicated that there might
be a problem and   she might need their help,  and said,   If I give a signal I
might need help subduing the guy.  Mathew Gordon, a professor of Middle
Eastern Studies at Miami University of Ohio, was sitting in a seat just behind
Bindar. According to him the whole scene   was horrifying. He was just a nor-
mal Joe going about his business.  In taking the airlines, Delta and Atlantic
Coast, to court, Bindar said that the incident on the Atlantic Coast plane was
due to ignorance and lack of training. In a statement he observed:
I, however, have not been the only Sikh, Muslim, Arab or other individual per-
ceived to be from the Middle East who has experienced the trauma and humilia-
tion that results from racial profiling after September 11. Just as thousands of
African Americans and Hispanics were victimized by racial profiling on the high-
ways of New Jersey and across the country, today, Sikhs, Muslims, Arabs and
others perceived to be from the Middle East are being illegally harassed and
racially profiled by persons like this attendant.