Unite Rochester: Local refugees targeted


Local refugees say they are being preyed upon on Rochester’s streets. Video by Max Schulte

Jon Hand , Staff writer10:37 a.m. EDT June 19, 2014

STORY HIGHLIGHTS


  • Local refugees say they are being targeted and preyed upon on Rochester's streets
  • Their anger is fueled by hundreds of incidents of violent and verbal bullying in recent years
  • Police and resettlement groups today say they are largely unaware of the escalating problem
  • A major obstacle to the growing dilemma: The refugees typically don't report crimes to police


This story was originally published online on June 7, 2014.

Bijaya Khadka looks at his father's bloody, swollen face and the rage that has been building for years begins to crest.
"I was very angry, very mad. My father doesn't even speak English," Khadka, 22, says in his heavy Nepali accent.

But his anger didn't begin on the day in April when his father, a 56-year-old refugee from Nepal, was beaten and robbed by three young black men as he walked along Lake Avenue with only a new pair of sandals in his hand and a few dollars in his pocket.

More: Are attacks on refugees hate crimes?

Special section: Unite Rochester

Nor did his fury boil a few years ago when Khadka was struck in the back of his head and his uncle was thrown to the ground, robbed of $60 and two bus passes.

Rather, he says, the violent and misplaced anger he feels toward African Americans has been building for years in this small community of perhaps a few thousand South Asian refugees living in small pockets of northwest Rochester near and in Jones Square. The anger is fueled, he and more than a dozen other residents interviewed say, by hundreds of incidents of robbery and violent and verbal bullying in recent years.

And for Khadka and his brother, the sight of their injured father crystallizes that rage into a single clear, terrible and inappropriate thought — a thought that pays no mind to the many American complexities surrounding race and class:
They wanted to go to war with the black community.

"African-Americans are targeting them, and there is just so much of this they are going to take," said Bill Wischmeyer, an advocate for the refugee community known as "Mr. Bill."

"They're angry. They are ready to explode and it's going to get worse until someone ends up dead."
The violent, racially charged tensions in what was once a mostly black neighborhood have caught the attention of authorities before.

Police and anti-gang groups have intervened in recent years, and agencies only recently familiar with the divide are hoping for a peaceful resolution — especially when the young refugees threatened retaliation with a cache of primitive weapons.

But police and resettlement groups today say they are largely unaware of the escalating problem, and Bhutanese and Nepalese refugees interviewed for the story acknowledged their reluctance to go to the authorities.

Instead, they say, they kept loose documentation of some 300 incidents before a meeting with police two years ago, and hundreds more since, only to see nothing change.

Now, they say, they are preparing to defend themselves — violently, if necessary.

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