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Attack on Indian students spurs UMass Lowell hate-crime forum

Jennifer Amy Myers

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LOWELL In a display of solidarity, nearly 300 students and community leaders gathered at UMass Lowell's Cumnock Hall last night to show their support for three Indian graduate students who were assaulted two weeks ago in what police say was a hate crime apparently fueled by anti-Middle Eastern sentiment.

"The incident that brings us together is appalling and unfortunate, but not surprising," said Ravi Sakhuja, of the Indian American Forum for Political Education, which sponsored the event. "I have lived here for 35 years and not until Sept. 11 did I ever feel my personal safety was at stake."

Sakhuja said FBI statistics show hate crimes have risen 1,600 percent since the terrorist attacks.

"Policy-makers in this country need to find a way to keep minorities safe who may look like the terrorists and are being confused as terrorists," he said.

On the night of Dec. 2, the three students were walking down Fourth Avenue in the Pawtucketville section of the city, on their way to campus, when a van pulled alongside and two men and a woman began directing slurs about Osama bin Laden at them.

At one point, the assailants got out of the van, forced the students to kneel, and kicked and beat them.

The students, all of whom had been in the United States only a few weeks, were not seriously injured, but the attack left them concerned for their safety.

John P. Cullinan, 17, of 29 Hadley Road, has been charged with felony assault charges, and felony hate crime charges are being pursued, Lowell Police Superintendent Edward Davis III said.

Because it is a hate crime, Davis said, Attorney General Thomas Reilly's office is involved in the investigation and the case will be going to a grand jury. He added that a female suspect has been identified and is facing similar charges, and a second male suspect has been tentatively identified by police.

"The suspects all have criminal records and are well-known by the Lowell police to be violent people," Davis told the gathering last night. "They will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I assure you, this will be pursued aggressively."

All of last night's speakers agreed that education and understanding are the keys to battling the type of ignorance that led to the assault.

"No one is born prejudiced, it is learned and it can be unlearned," said attorney Neil Sherring, an Indian American Forum member and former assistant Massachusetts attorney general. "When it is not uprooted, prejudice is just passed along from generation to generation."

Krishna Vedula, UMass Lowell's dean of engineering, proposed that a task force be formed to educate the community about hate crimes. Because Lowell is such a diverse city, he said, a unified multicultural task force started here could be a model for the rest of the country.

"Out of this misfortune comes an opportunity," Vedula said.

One of the barriers to unity at the university is the lack of communication between different ethnic and racial groups, said Bobby Tugbiyele, president of the Association of Students of African Origin at UMass Lowell.

"We need to address the issue of youth violence going on in college," Tugbiyele said. "There are many different cultural groups at this school, but they do not come together to talk."

State Sen. Steve Panagiotakokos reminded the audience that all U.S. citizens are, in effect, immigrants, and applauded the Indian community's contributions to this country.

"Three hundred years ago this was a wilderness. Two hundred years ago it was just a band of rebels, but today this country sets the agenda for the world," said the Lowowell Democrat. "We all are immigrants who came here for a better life and we must stand up and not let ignorance and hatred ruin the community."

U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan said he is pushing for a vote in Congress on a hate-crime bill that would give local law enforcement technical, forensic and prosecutorial assistance from the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute hate crimes.

"It is high time that we in Congress act on this measure and vote on the hate crimes bill," Meehan said, noting that he had lobbied unsuccessfully for such a law in the past. "We need to take a horrible incident like this and hold it up to public scrutiny. Everyone in this city is committed to making sure this doesn't happen again."

"Tonight is only a beginning," Vedula said. "We will continue this conversation and work together to find a solution to this problem."