Girl wearing Palestine hoodie says she was attacked on Ctrain

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Members of Calgary’s Muslim community are calling for hate crime charges to be laid after a teenage girl said she was berated and assaulted on her way home on the CTrain.

Amal Akel said her 15-year-old daughter was heading home June 6 while wearing a hoodie that showed an outline of Palestine’s historical borders in a Kuffiyeh print, a traditional style of clothing from the region. Shortly after she got on the train, a woman started to verbally assault her daughter, Akel said, and asked if she was from Palestine and if she had family in the country.

When Akel’s daughter confirmed she did, the woman began to say they deserved to die and that they were terrorists.

The two got into a vocal argument that escalated.

“She pushed my daughter, she managed to balance herself,” said Akel. “Then (my daughter) punched her in the face. With the (woman) on the ground bleeding, the CTrain opened the door and my daughter ran away.”

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She said the attack has left her family terrified, and she and her daughter no longer feel safe with her travelling alone.

“This girl, this lady, she has the courage to approach a child and talk to her like that. I cannot understand how she has the guts to do that to a child,” said Akel.

Akel said she did not initially report the attack to police but after reading about a hate-motivated attack on a Muslim family in London, Ont., last week, she said she understood it was important to document every hateful assault against minority communities.

Police have said the London attack — in which a white man is accused of running a family down with his vehicle, killing four people and injuring a nine-year-old boy as they were out for a walk — is believed to be hate-motivated. Many politicians have decried it as an act of terrorism.

Dr. Mukarram Zaidi, who works with the Canadian Muslim Research Think Tank, said attacks against Muslim people and other visible minorities have been increasing in recent years. He said there have been several targeted attacks in Calgary in the past few weeks following local protests against recent violence in the Middle East.

He said politicians need to condemn Islamophobia and agree that acts of hate are heinous. He also called for police to investigate such assaults as hate crimes.

Zaidi also said media need to provide more nuanced coverage of the conflict in the Middle East so people in the western world have a better understanding as to why there are protests calling for change.

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“The politicians have to accept (Islamophobia exists), police need to put the proper charges and tell people that if you’re doing these crimes, It’s not okay,” said Zaidi. “To do these crimes, it’s a hate crime and it has consequences, that have a criminal record attached to it.”

Calgary police could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Jerrica Goodwin, a press secretary for Premier Jason Kenney, said both the premier and Justice Minister Kaycee Madu have repeatedly condemned acts of hate and they do so for the attack on the CTrain.

Speaking outside the Al-Rashid Mosque in Edmonton on Friday, Kenney offered condolences to the Muslim community in the wake of the London attack.

“It is incumbent on all of us of course, with words, to denounce racism and hate-motivated violence whenever and wherever it occurs. said Kenney. “But it is also incumbent on all of us, especially on government, to act, to take real action. To make racial religious and vulnerable minorities to feel safe and protected.”

Kenney announced a grant Friday that will allow religious, ethnic and Indigenous minority groups to apply for funding to bolster security against hate crimes. Madu announced this week that there are plans to create a hate crimes unit in the province.

dshort@postmedia.com

— With files from Ashley Joannou