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'Take that f****** turban off, you terrorist'

Aseem Chhabra in New York

On September 11, a few minutes before 9am, Amrik Singh was in a New York City cab heading towards the World Trade Centre. From there he planned to catch either the PATH train or a ferry that would take him across the Hudson to Jersey City, New Jersey, where he works in the financial service industry.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about the trip, except that the traffic was slow. It was then that he and the cab driver noticed that one of the towers of the World Trade Centre was on fire.

As the roads approaching the World Trade Centre were blocked, Singh hopped off the cab and decided to walk the rest of the distance. Minutes later, like hundreds of others on the streets, he saw the second commercial airliner hit the other WTC tower.

"There was complete panic and everyone started to run for cover," Singh, who is in his late twenties, said. But he had no idea that this was just the beginning of his nightmare.

"I suddenly noticed that a couple of guys [there were three or four men, he said] across the street were yelling at me: 'Take that f****** turban off, you terrorist'," Singh, who was wearing a black turban, said.

"To get away from them I turned east. They started walking behind me. I ran west and they ran behind me. I think I then ran north. I don't even remember. I was in such a panic. My cell phone wouldn't work."

Singh eventually ran down the Broad Street subway station. He went through the turnstile and jumped into a train that was standing at the station. A short while later he ended up at the Court Street station in Brooklyn.

"I either evaded those guys, or they stopped pursuing me, or some debris hit them, I don't know," Singh said.

Singh faced the threatening situation at a time when the Sikh community in the US is particularly feeling vulnerable to racist attacks. On September 12, the Sikh Media Watch and Resource Task Force (SMART) based in Germantown, Maryland, issued a press release calling upon the community to use caution for the next few weeks.

"Because of yesterday's terrorist attacks, blind anti-Muslim sentiment is running high throughout the nation," the SMART release said. "Since many Americans commonly mistake Sikhs for followers of Islam, or associate [them] with Osama bin Laden, there is a heightened potential for violent attacks directed against members of the Sikh community."

The SMART release also had an eleven-point advisory for Sikhs who may find themselves in a hate-motivated crime situation. The advisory includes some commonsense suggestions, such as carrying a cell phone and not walking alone in public, especially at night.

One such suggestion reads: "If someone makes a racist comment to you or tries to aggressively approach you, immediately break the tension by saying 'God bless you'!"

Amrik Singh did not want to disclose the ethnicity of men who chased him around the downtown Manhattan blocks. "They weren't dressed in suits and ties," he said. "They weren't business people working for companies in that area. I don't know what they were doing there."

Singh, who grew up in the US and holds an American passport, has faced racist experiences in the past. "I think everybody has them if you are not a Caucasian," he said. "But it was too much at once. First you are running from a building that you think is going to collapse. But you do not expect a racist experience when you are in the middle of a serious situation. It was a scary feeling."

The September 11 incident has left Singh uncomfortable, but he directs his anger at the terrorists. "I am an American citizen," he said. "I am angry that the World Trade Centre was attacked. I am worried about terrorism in my country. And I have a firm resolve to fight it. But it's harder to concentrate on the main problem if you feel that your fellow Americans are blaming you."

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