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Indian store-owners in US being targeted?
The US department of justice has charged 49 people, including 43 Indian American convenience store-owners.
A sting operation by US authorities aimed at curbing rising use of a dangerous drug has sparked allegations that Indian American convenience stories are being targeted.
The US department of justice has charged 49 people, including 43 Indian American convenience store-owners, in Georgia of selling ingredients that can be used to make the potent drug methamphetamine.
But lawyers representing the accused are blaming it on a "cultural gap".
"The targeted stores were in six counties in northwest Georgia. It appears they (federal agents) targeted only local stores and not the big chains or chain stores owned by rich people," McCracken Poston, a lawyer who represents some of the defendants, told IANS.
The case hit the headlines after a New York Times story pointed to the cultural gap between law enforcement and the defendants and quoted Poston as saying it may be a case of ethnic targeting.
"...46 of the accused are foreign-born and I think that seems to bespeak of targeting of a certain group of people and most are Indian-born and many share the last name Patel", Poston said.
Rajiv Goyle, a Washington-based attorney who handles civil rights cases, said that dozens of South Asian lawyers were keen to provide assistance to the store-owners.
"Operation Meth Merchant", as the sting operation was named, began in early 2004 and focused on convenience stores in six Georgia counties based on complaints received from the public through local law enforcement.
In June this year, US Attorney for Northern Georgia David Nahmiah's office said it had indicted 49 individuals and 16 corporations after the sting operation in which paid informants were sent to the stores to buy over-the-counter medications and other material used to make methamphetamine.
Said Goyle: "The allegations seem troubling. Most of these people, if they understood the informant at all, thought he was talking about a barbeque. This raises very troubling concerns, and the community feels people are being targeted, maybe not consciously, but by being at the wrong place at the wrong time."
The department of justice has denied allegations of racial bias.
Lawyers representing the defendants maintain their clients did not knowingly sell medications and were not conversant with American slang such as "cooking", which the informants had sometimes used.
The pre-trial hearings have been set for the week of Sep 12.
Dilip Patel, a store-owner, told IANS: "In our community, most of our employees don't speak good English, just enough to run a store.
"In the cases that I have seen, he (informant) used slang that only people who use drugs would know - 'I need to finish a cook'. Only lawyers and policemen and drug dealers would know what that meant.
"And I know many of the Indian-born clerks did not know what that meant and were just trying to be polite to the customer and indulge in conversation."
Asked what the motivation would be for targeting Indian-owned stores, Poston said: "I think the motivation began with the confidential informants. I think the police just lacked the sensitivity and knowledge of the culture.
"I think the informants, many of them convicted felons and drug users, in order to make money or to help themselves out of their own legal troubles, targeted the Indian stores because it's not a huge constituency to cry out if they are set up."
Satya Shaw, president of the recently formed Asian Association of C-Store Owners, said the clerks probably misunderstood because of the language barrier. "So the association is educating store-owners," he said.
According to Shaw, Indian American store-owners have a purchasing power of $80 billion, and make up 80,000 of the 1.3 million convenience store owners in the US.
