Fresno's First Homicide in 2016... Another Sikh.

[Shiranu]

http://mic.com/articles/131757/fresno-california-s-first-homicide-victim-of-2016-is-another-sikh-american-man#.TMzouoaSE

On New Year's Day, a 68-year-old liquor store employee named Gurcharan Singh Gill was found stabbed to death at an auto repair shop in central Fresno, California. It was the city's first homicide of 2016, according to reports.

The investigation is ongoing, but Gill was Sikh American, making his killing the second violent crime committed against a person of his ethnicity in Fresno in the last two weeks alone. The Fresno Bee reported Dec. 27 that another Sikh man â€" Amrik Singh Bal, 68 â€" was accosted, intentionally hit by a car and beaten by two white men in the central California city of 516,000.

The incidents marked the latest in a wave of violence directed at Sikh Americans and Muslims in the last few months, intensified by terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, and the anti-Muslim, xenophobic rhetoric that has risen in their wake. Sikh Americans â€" who are often mistaken for Muslims â€" have faced a spike in suspected hate crimes and harassment directed at them over the last 15 years, often involving accusations of terrorism.

Bal's assailants reportedly broke the his collarbone in the process of the December assault, yelling racial slurs and asking, "Why are you here?" Three months prior, on Sept. 10, a 53-year-old Sikh American cab driver named Inderjit Singh Mukker was viciously beaten and called a "terrorist" and "Bin Laden" by a teenager in Darien, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

Both incidents have a lengthy and troubling precedent. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, hate crimes against Muslims and people misidentified as Muslims in the U.S. have risen from an average of 20-30 per year to 100-150, as Mic has previously reported.

These incidents include an August 2012 massacre in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, where a white supremacist named Wade Michael Page shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple, or gurdwara â€" one of the worst attacks on a house of worship in American history, after the June 2015 killing of nine parishioners at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and a 1991 attack on a Buddhist center outside Phoenix, which also claimed nine lives.

This latest homicide marks a grim start to the new year. Meanwhile, police in Fresno are still searching for Gill's killer.

But when we view Muslims (or anyone who looks like one) less than human... what can we expect?

[drunkenshoe]

Again? And a liqour store employee?

'Incidents'. Contrary to fantasy tv serie lines, words are actually not wind. 

[Baruch]

Again? And a liqour store employee?

'Incidents'. Contrary to fantasy tv serie lines, words are actually not wind.

I would think, working in a liquor store or a convenience store or a gas station ... is generally more hazardous than most jobs.  Particularly if you are there late at night.

[GSOgymrat]

I would think, working in a liquor store or a convenience store or a gas station ... is generally more hazardous than most jobs.  Particularly if you are there late at night.

When I was 19 I spent a summer working night shift at a gas station/convenience store on the prostitute street in Asheville, NC. It was a small chain of stores called "The Hot Spot." In one summer I had a gun pulled on me twice, a guy threatened to beat me up and my first ever boyfriend, who turned out to be mentally ill, had a brother who contacted the manager of the store and insisted I be fired because I was a homosexual.  I wasn't fired because the manager confided to me she couldn't do basic math and I surreptitiously filled out her fiscal reports every morning. All this drama for minimum wage. Fun times!

[Baruch]

When I was 19 I spent a summer working night shift at a gas station/convenience store on the prostitute street in Asheville, NC. It was a small chain of stores called "The Hot Spot." In one summer I had a gun pulled on me twice, a guy threatened to beat me up and my first ever boyfriend, who turned out to be mentally ill, had a brother who contacted the manager of the store and insisted I be fired because I was a homosexual.  I wasn't fired because the manager confided to me she couldn't do basic math and I surreptitiously filled out her fiscal reports every morning. All this drama for minimum wage. Fun times!

Yes, but Americans don't want to work at those bad jobs (sarc).  Maybe some jobs are really undesirable.  Let the critics go work them.

[drunkenshoe]

I would think, working in a liquor store or a convenience store or a gas station ... is generally more hazardous than most jobs.  Particularly if you are there late at night.

No, the points is that almost all muslims in a traditonal minorty group in a foriegn country -who usually get dressed traditonally- wouldn't work in a liqour store. Alcohol. Haram.

And you'd think those dumbass racist fucking morons know this.

[Shiranu]

No, the points is that almost all muslims in a traditonal minorty group in a foriegn country -who usually get dressed traditonally- wouldn't work in a liqour store. Alcohol. Haram.

And you'd think those dumbass racist fucking morons know this.

He was murdered at an auto repair shop, so to be "fair" to them they probably didn't know he worked at a liquor store.

[drunkenshoe]

He was murdered at an auto repair shop, so to be "fair" to them they probably didn't know he worked at a liquor store.

I see. Article says 'liqour store' and I thought it was something you can't miss.

[Unbeliever]

I expect this kind of shit to get worse before it gets better - but then, I'm a pessimist.