Hate Crime

 

Satona Kato

 

“I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.”

 

This is what woman who was charged with murder as a crime in a fatal subway push said to police. In December 27, 2012, a 31 years-old woman pushed a man onto the tracks of an elevated subway station in U.S. and the man was crushed by an oncoming train. The woman, Erika Menendez, selected her victim because she believed him to be a Muslim or a Hindu. Officials said she conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths. She probably decided the target by appearance.

Such kinds of crime are called hate crime. Hate crime is not occurred only about religion. Hate crimes occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because he or she is the member of a certain social group, include race, religion, disability, ethnicity, and gender. We can divide this crime. Some of these crimes are caused by hatred from perpetrator’s experience and memories. And others are caused by hatred from perpetrator’s mind that wants to bully weak people. The case I wrote at the first part is the former. The memory of 9.11 gave her the strong hatred toward Muslim people. These cases are difficult to avoid because it is difficult to reduce one’s hatred by explain or discussion. There are little people who can keep calm and think carefully when their family or friends are killed. These pains in hearts sometime cause cruel incidents. What we can do for reducing these incidents is education through experience. We should teach strongly we must not identify people by social group, and such aggressive action lead opponent’s hostility and repeat of same tragedy when people were children through the experience. And also the knowledge helps to stop attack to innocent people. But it is question whether education can overcome the pains in hearts or not. At least, the education at present time could not do so.

 About the latter case, we can also say that the important thing is education. These cases are caused all over the world. Many people have experienced aggression, hostility, and verbal abuse because of their disability or gender. The more people in majority became not to do discriminate minority people, the less these cases are caused.

The most important thing to avoid all hate crime is to know that our hate crime lead next hate crime and that vicious circle become never ends. The teachings, “If we experience sad incident, we should avoid that another people experience same thing.”, “we must not bully minority people.” above all “We must not kill people.” ,are common things. We should have learned such thing from childhood. But the incidents are not stopped. We cannot ignore that innocent people are killed by hatred. Did the perpetrator have the place they can say own opinion? Were there person who can stop perpetrator’s behavior? We should continue to find the way to eliminate hate crime.

 

 

References

 

MARC, S. (２０１２, １２ ２９).

Woman is charged with murder as a hate crime in a fatal subway push. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/nyregion/woman-is-held-in-death-of-man-pushed-onto-subway-tracks-in-queens.html?_r=0