Washington, DC – Leaders of national Sikh, Arab and Muslim organizations met with FBI Director Robert Mueller II on Wednesday, May 28 to discuss further partnerships with the community and the possible development of an advisory committee that would coordinate efforts at state and national levels. Last week’s meeting, a follow-up to the February 28, 2003 meeting, took place a week after a Sikh American truck driver was shot twice in a hate crime in Phoenix, AZ. “While we appreciate Director Mueller’s initiative to meet with us,“ said Manjit Singh, Chair of the Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force (SMART) Board of Directors, “we want to ensure that preventative measures to reduce hate crimes take place hand-in-hand with investigation and prosecution, especially in light of the Phoenix incident last week.” Singh, who represented SMART, the oldest national Sikh American civil rights and advocacy organization, voiced the Sikh community’s concerns since the Phoenix incident on May 19, 2003. Following the shooting of Avtar Singh Chiera, the 52-year-old Sikh American who was shot after parking his 18-wheeler, SMART conducted training at the Phoenix Police Department headquarters for law enforcement officials and community leaders. SMART is encouraged that the FBI has responded positively to its suggestion of conducting similar religious awareness and protocol workshops at its training academy and at field offices across the country. Since September 2001, SMART has been reporting hate crimes and working closely with the FBI’s Washington, DC office and their various field offices. Following a meeting last February, the FBI issued a media release saying, “The FBI’s aggressive response to hate crimes has sent a clear message that vigilante attacks will not be tolerated. (Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks), the FBI has initiated 414 hate crime investigations involving Muslim, Sikh and Arab-American victims, with 17 persons being charged federally thus far. Additionally, some 129 persons have been charged with state and local crimes in connection with those investigations.” This meeting was the fourth in a series between the director and the leaders of national Muslim, Sikh and Arab-American organizations, though not all of them have been publicized. Others attending the meeting were representatives of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Arab American Institute, the Islamic Institute, the American Muslim Council, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
