Racist Destruction Stuns Toronto Family
Posted October 18, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
When Rafiq Jasar came out to look at his cousin’s car on Tuesday, he was stunned. Someone had smashed the vehicle he was storing for his relative. But he was even more surprised when he returned to the street at his Danforth and Greenwood area home Thursday morning to see the vandals had been back – and this time, they left a message.
“They smashed the windows,” Jasar explains. “And then yesterday they smashed the windshield.” But amidst all that mess, he was truly outraged when he leaned into the wreckage and discovered a racist slur against Pakistanis scrawled into the dashboard. The idiots who did it weren’t even aware that the family is actually from Afghanistan.
But to the victims, that’s a moot point. “It doesn’t matter,” Jasar responds. “Hate is hate. Nobody should hate anybody in this country.” The attack has him thinking back to another incident from this summer and wondering if they’re connected. “I heard bang-bang twice,” he remembers. “When I look at my window and door, it was hit by eggs.”
Witnesses recall seeing a group of teens running from the scene but so far, no one knows who they are. Their presence and their apparent return visits have the family on edge. “What if somebody attacks us, you know?” wonders Selma Jasar, Rafiq’s daughter. “First it’s material items, your car, your home, like when it was egged, whoever that was. Then they attack you. You just never know.”
Police told the family to get rid of the car, but they know that won’t solve anything. They want the perpetrators caught. “You’re attacked for no reason,” Selma complains. “It’s like what did we do? For what reason? What’s your problem? Like leave us alone.”
Police are still probing the incident and say it’s too soon to know whether there’s enough evidence to call it a hate crime. But the Rafiqs feel sure it couldn’t have been anything else.
