Washington: Former US secretary of state and Democrat candidate for 2016 US presidential elections Hillary Clinton, on Tuesday, has urged Donald Trump to speak up on the racially motivated Kansas shooting that left one Indian killed and another injured.
“With threats and hate crimes on rise, we shouldn't have to tell @POTUS to do his part. He must step up & speak,” she said in a tweet.
The attack, by 51-year-old Navy veteran Adam Purinton has sent shockwaves across the Indian community in America and has raised questions of safety among the expats in the country which has seen increasing number of hate crimes and anti-immigrant attacks of late.
President Donald Trump has maintained silence over the incident. Many attribute the rise in hate crimes on his visibly anti-immigrant policy.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has called the links between the attack and President Trump’s anti-immigrant stance ‘absurd’.
“Obviously, any loss of life is tragic, but I’m not going to get into, like, to suggest that there’s any correlation I think is a bit absurd. So I’m not going to go any further than that,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer, told reporters.
Earlier last week, 32-year-old Indian engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed and another Indian man, Alok Madasani were injured after an American Navy veteran yelling “get out of my country” and “terrorist” opened fire on them at a bar in an apparent racially motivated hate crime. An American man who tried to intervene was also shot.
