I have had a fever for most of the day, so when I woke up and checked my GMail, I thought I was hallucinating while reading something sent out via ASATA (Alliance of South Asians Taking Action). SALDEF (The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund) just issued a press release regarding an incident which makes me sick; Kuldip Singh Nag, a Sikh American VETERAN was assaulted by the Joliet police, in front of his six-year old child and wife. His crime? Parking a van with expired tags in his driveway. What. The. Fuck.
I can’t find anything beyond a useless mention of Nag’s arrest on a “police blotter” type of article, so if any of you know of further developments, please let us know. The following is from SALDEF:
On Friday March 30, 2007 at around 3:00pm, Mr. Kuldip Singh Nag, a Sikh American who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in the U.S. Navy during the first Gulf War, was at his home in Joliet, IL when a local police officer noticed that a van parked on Mr. Nag’s private property had expired registration tags. Upon being confronted with this, Mr. Nag’s wife, Vera Kaur Nag, informed the officer that the van is parked on their driveway and was inoperable.
Mr. Nag then came outside to answer the officer’s questions regarding the van. The Joliet police officer then demanded that Mr. Nag park the van inside his garage and not on the driveway, to which Mr. Nag responded to the officer that it was not possible and that regardless, the van is parked on his private property and he has a right to park it on his driveway.
At this moment, the officer pulled out his pepper spray and attacked Mr. Nag. As Mr. Nag screamed in agony, the officer removed his baton and violently struck Mr. Nag numerous times until he fell to the ground. While the assault ensued, the officer was reported by both Mr. and Mrs. Nag as saying, “You f****** Arab! You f***** immigrant, go back to you f****** country before I kill you!â€
Mr. Nag’s wife and six year-old child both witnessed the violent assault, which resulted in Mr. Nag immediately being admitted to the hospital where he stayed for five days due to complaints of intense pain and head trauma. Mr. Nag also received numerous bruises and a serious head injury which have caused him to go blind for several minutes at a time.
I join SALDEF in calling for an immediate investigation into this brutal crime. Kuldip Singh Nag served the very nation this xenophobic police officer screamed at him to leave and while a few of you may question my emphasis on his military service, I just think it adds an extra ungrateful, deplorable angle to an incident which is already appalling.
“This case seems to be a clear incident of police misconduct in Illinois,†said SALDEF Managing Director Kavneet Singh. “We are horrified at the anti-immigrant sentiment the officer allegedly used as he violently accosted Mr. Nag, and further that his six year old son was a witness to this violent assault. We call upon both Joliet and Illinois officials to investigate this incident and for the Illinois community to stand in solidarity with Mr. Nag.â€
Illinois desis, where you at? And will there ever be a point in my lifetime when someone doesn’t tell a South Asian American to go back to where they “fucking came from”?
UPDATE [By Ennis]: I spoke to somebody at SALDEF who said that Mr. Nag’s legal counsel can indeed verify that he is a Veteran.
A person hiding behind a pseudonym wrote, in an attempt to “spin” the reactions as “selfish”:
“You are angry about seeing a fellow desi get abused by cop”.
I’m not a desi by any definition. Bigotry and racism of any sort always makes me angry — because it is irrational, because it is destructive to the individual and the society, because it brings nothing good.
You can call that “selfish”. I call it rational selfishness.
Not everybody gets to live in a city, and this happened in a suburb of Chicago, not in the middle of Northern Idaho.
Was it one in ten billion? Well, there aren’t ten billion desis in the world and not even one million in the USA, so the odds of this happening near a city are considerably higher than you might think, if this incident is true.
Yes, it will happen to you, if you go and visit some small town in Idaho. Just don’t go there. However, if you stay within the proximity of a city, the chances of an incident happening like this are one in ten billion
Are you serious?
With so many logical and arithmetic errors in a space about five lines, he couldn’t possibly be serious. Probably writes for the Onion.
[quote] Not everybody gets to live in a city, and this happened in a suburb of Chicago, not in the middle of Northern Idaho.
Was it one in ten billion? Well, there aren’t ten billion desis in the world and not even one million in the USA, so the odds of this happening near a city are considerably higher than you might think, if this incident is true. [/quote]
The odds I gave are nevertheless consistent with a hypothetical scenario that assumes a sample of ten billion desis. You could reduce the sample size; however, that wouldn’t affect the odds. In general, the odds are consistent with ANY sample size of desis, subject to the constraint that we limit ourselves to the population of the US.
My point is serious. Given that there are only one billion desis in the world and only one million in the US, you’re saying that the odds of such a racist incident ever happening are less than 1 in 1,000. And yet, violent racist incidents occur. We blog about them. They’re not a daily occurrence, but they’re not a 1 in 1,000 years occurrence either.
The desi population in the United States is around 2.4 million as of 2006.
What happened was wrong but still there’s a certain amount of poetic justice in a brown-skinned man who helped kill brown-skinned people for the Evil Empire (yes, I mean the US) during the 1st Gulf War getting the shit beat out of him by the guardians of Empire in the belly of the Empire. Of course, I think the same thing holds true when white guys get fucked over by the government, too.
I am sad and disspointed with the whole incident. My prayers are with Family in these tough time. Did that officer forget that once upon a time his grand father also landed on this country in a boat and this Country is the way it is because of the hard work of people from all over the world! Lets Condemn this incident and bring attention of Ilinois Community towards this disgusting happening in thier neighborhood
What ever came of this? I never found any more about it.
Update: Joliet officer cleared of abuse claims.
Wow- so three eyewitnesses to event stated that the officers didn’t use slurs toward Mr. Nag and Mr. Nag misrepresented his military history? Interesting. Thanks Dave.