Friday, August 10, 2012

Is The Radical Right On The Rise In The U.S.?


Vigils are being held across the US mourning the six members of the Sikh community killed in a shooting rampage in Oak Creek in suburban Milwaukee in the state of Wisconsin on Sunday.
"The one key thing that's missing in this entire debate is the term "terrorism"… we haven't heard many American media and socio-political leaders echo that same sentiment [as the authorities]. Imagine if a brown, bearded man walked into a Wisconsin church and killed six white people, would anybody in America even pause to call it an act of terrorism? Absolutely not."
- Arsalan Iftikhar, an international human rights lawyer
Five men - Prakash Singh, Suveg Singh, Ranjit Singh, Satwant Singh Kaleka and Sita Singh - and one woman - Paramjit Kaur - were killed in the shooting.
The alleged gunman, 40-year-old Wade Michael Page, was also killed after he opened fire on a police officer. Page was an army veteran who was discharged from the military in 1998. He was also a white supremacist.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights group that tracks hate groups in the US, says it has been tracking Page with concern for more than a decade.

Page, who reportedly described himself as a member of the 'Hammerskins Nation', was trained in psychological warfare and served in the US army from 1992 before being demoted and discharged in 1998.

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