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Reuters General/ - Article, Sáb, 31 de Março de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Civil Rights)
Iraqi-American murder highlights
anti-Muslim hate crimes
(Reuters) - The murder of an Iraqi-American mother in
a close-knit refugee community on the outskirts of San
Diego has brought attention to a rise in bias crimes
against Muslims, even as police caution against
definitively labeling her death a hate crime.
Shaima Alawadi, a 32-year-old stay-at-home mother of
five, was found brutally beaten in the dining room of
her rented home last week by her 17-year-old
daughter, police said. She died of her wounds on
Saturday.
Local police are investigating the killing as a possible
hate crime because of a note found next to Alawadi's
unconscious body that threatened the family and was
reported to have labeled her a terrorist. An FBI bias
crimes squad is assisting.
Alawadi's death comes at a time of renewed
anti-Muslim sentiment nationwide. The number of
anti-Muslim hate groups tripled to 30 in 2011,
according to a recent report by the Southern Poverty
Law Center, which advocates for civil rights.
There was a big jump in hate crimes against Muslims
after the September 11, 2001 attacks carried out by
Al-Qaeda, but the number subsided during the middle
of the decade of the 2000s.
Bias crimes are on the rise again, reaching 186
separate offenses in 2010, the highest in five years,
the FBI data show.
"We are considering the hate crime aspect, but we are
not labeling it as such," El Cajon Police Lieutenant
Mark Coit said. But he could not reveal any details on
the status of the case.
In a sign of how closely the case was being watched,
the U.S. State Department expressed condolences for
Alawadi's death, and Iraqi government representatives
attended the funeral.
Both law enforcement and Arab and Muslim lobby
groups, have stopped short of ruling out other
scenarios, and even Alawadi's family was uncertain of
what happened.
"The majority of the family believes that it could be
anything," said Nazanin Wahid, a friend who is serving
as a spokeswoman for the family. "But the fact that
they found a note and that the police said initially that it
resonates like a hate crime led them to believe that it
could be that."
Community activists point to a history of violence and
intimidation toward the local Muslim community, even
as they say they cannot recall ever such a severe
crime.
"Maybe this wasn't a hate crime. But I have cases that
are hate crimes," said Besma Coda, Culture Adviser
for Chaldean-Middle Eastern Social Services in El
Cajon.
Some of Coda's clients have suffered broken bones
and beatings in recent years, she said. One client had
to get 10 stitches in his head because of a
hate-motivated beating.
GROWING IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY
Since Alawadi's death, at least two members of El
Cajon's Muslim community have reported receiving
threatening phone calls, said Sadaf Hane, civil rights
director of the San Diego chapter of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations.
The Arab community in particular is prone to
under-reporting such discrimination because of a
distrust of the abuses of authorities, Hane added.
El Cajon is in the heart of East San Diego County,
which is home to the second largest Iraqi community in
the United States, behind Detroit. More than half of El
Cajon's 100,000 residents are of Middle Eastern
descent.
Like Alawadi's family, some of the city's Arab residents
are largely Shi'ite refugees from Iraq who arrived in the
United States in the 1980s and 1990s after fleeing
their homeland in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's
1980 invasion of Shi'ite neighbor Iran and the long war
that followed.
But the town has seen an even larger surge of Iraqi
newcomers since 2008 through a U.S.-funded refugee
resettlement program, often joining relatives in the
area, said Michael McKay, Deputy Director of Refugee
Services at the Catholic Charities Diocese of San
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