A video on YouTube of a sleeping elderly Sikh man with the caption “flying with Bin Laden” is going viral on internet nowadays, it was published on YouTube on December 9 and since then it has been viewed 80,000 times and has received 1,000 dislikes for its shameful discrimination.
The video has been said to be shot by a co-passenger of Sikh man, on the Jet Blue flight which was flying to California from New York. He posted it on YouTube under the title, “Would you feel safe?” with the caption “flying with Bin Laden”.
One of the users of Japa Khalsa, made a comment, “I feel unsafe sitting next to ignorant white people who are prejudiced.” Soon the others joined him and also made an appeal, “Everyone watching this video REPORT it for ‘hateful and abusive content’ the guy is triggering everyone to watch it so he can make money off of the advertisements!?”
The Sikh man’s daughter also flagged the video on YouTube and filed a complaint against it with a non-govermental organisation called United Sikhs. The Staff Attorney of United Sikhs, Jaspreet Kaur said, “Incidents like this are shocking… These types of incidents only weaken the fabric of our nation.” The Sikh man in the video also came to know about the video only after it went viral, the NGO told.
In Los Angeles, the very same day an act of hate was committed against a Gurudwara using hateful graffiti which talked about Islamic State. Earlier this month, a photo went viral on Facebook which showed the first turbaned Sikh player to play in NCAA and it was captioned as, “Nobody wants to guard Muhammad, he’s too explosive.” However, his friend came out in his support and said, “Do the world a favor and educate yourself” – and it got thousands of likes.
Targeting Sikhs is not a new incident but the community leaders are afraid that it is the consequence of Paris terror attacks and California shootings.
