The Sikh community of New York has once again suffered the indignity of an attack on a Sikh student. Last week, Jagmohan Singh Premi, a student of Richmond Hill High

School, was punched in the face and a student tried to take off his patka (turban).

A student of Richmond Hill High School, Queens, Premi was sitting in class when a classmate partially untied his patka. Premi tried to secure it, but his tormenter punched him in the face. He was holding a key between his knuckles.

Doctors said Premi has a contusion and possible orbital fracture.

“I am sad this is happening in America. I want to go to school to learn,” Premi said at a press conference in Manhattan.

Premi said the tormenter has been harassing him for long time, pulling the Sikh’s beard in class, squeezing his top-knot, making fun of the patka, taunting him by asking if he ever washed his hair, and so on.

He said he’d reported the harassment to his teachers but they or the school administration did little to stop the tormenter. Though the tormenter had been suspended earlier this year, specifically because he tried to remove Premi’s patka, he continued to harass Premi in class. That harassment culminated in the violence on June 6.

“Fed up. That is the only way I can describe how we feel about the incident,” said Amardeep Singh, executive director of the Sikh Coalition. “How many more meetings

is it going to take before our children are safe? How many more press conferences? How many more calls from distressed Sikh parents because the schools can’t do their job? How many more reports by the Sikh Coalition like ‘Hatred in the Hallways’? How many? I personally handed a folder to the Commissioner in July 2007 that listed Richmond Hill High School as a ‘problem school’ for Sikh children. What action was taken? It clearly was not enough to spare Premi a school year of torment. This is inexcusable. We’re fed up and our patience is running thin. The Department needs to give the Sikh community a plan to protect the Sikh community from bias in schools and we need that plan now.”

On July 16, 2007, the coalition directly raised the issue of anti-Sikh harassment at Richmond Hill High School at a meeting with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein in materials submitted to the Chancellor and his staff at that meeting.

In April 2008, the Sikh Coalition discussed Richmond Hill High School in its report “Making Our Voices Heard: A Civil Rights Agenda for New York City Sikhs.” Page 10 of that report specifically lists Richmond Hill High School under the heading “Problem Schools.” The Coalition found that over half of all Sikh students at Richmond Hill High who responded to our survey reported being harassed at school.

“It’s utterly incredulous that the Department of Education fails to acknowledge the problem of harassment of students in our public schools, said Council Member John Liu. Just a year ago, Harpal Singh Vacher was attacked in a public school, and yet the DOE has lifted nary a finger to address this persistent problem.”

“The DOE has to stop turning a blind eye towards this harassment against students in public schools. Not only is the Department failing to secure a learning environment, it is putting students in peril. The DOE is as culpable as the individual who actually perpetrated this attack against Jagmohan,” said Singh.

“This is totally unacceptable,” Council Member Robert Jackson, chair of the City Council’s Education Committee. “We’ve been down this road before and we should not be on it once again. The DOE’s responsibility is to ensure that students are safe from harassment and changes are absolutely mandatory.”