November 15, 2002	Friday	Ramazan 9, 1423

NEW YORK, Nov 14: US officials responded to attacks on Muslims after last year’s Sept 11 attacks but should have been better prepared to stop a steep rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Wednesday.

The international rights watchdog praised officials from President George Bush on down for condemning “backlash” violence but said the government contradicted that message by secretly detaining 1,200 Muslim men in its investigation.

“The government is on the one hand pounding this pulpit of tolerance, says private actors shouldn’t be discriminating and with the other hand, in terms of finding criminals, targeting certain communities,” Amardeep Singh, author of the 41-page report “We Are Not the Enemy”, said in an interview.

The New York-based organization said violence against Arabs, other Muslims and those perceived to be Muslims such as Sikhs and South Asians, rose sharply after the Sept 11 attacks.

The report said the US government reported a 17-fold increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes from 28 in 2000 to 481 last year. It said that in addition to crimes, the Sept 11 attacks spurred numerous acts of discrimination and racial profiling.

The crimes included at least three murders, as well as beatings, arson, shootings, vehicular assaults and verbal abuse and violation of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu religious buildings, the report said.

It said the anti-Muslim violence was predictable because during the past 20 years, hate crimes against Muslims had been triggered by the Middle East conflict and acts of extremism attributed to Arabs or other Muslims.

The rights group said the response by officials at federal, state, city, county and local level was reactive and not proactive enough to have prevented some of the backlash.—Reuters