According to Overland Park police, officers made contact with her Wednesday afternoon. She was not abducted or held against her will. Police said there is no criminal investigation. [nbc]

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Are you in Kansas? Pay attention to this photo. Her name is Aisha Khan and she’s missing.

I can’t shake the chills her story gives me. She’s petite, 19 yrs old, newly wed and a college student. Her sister dropped Aisha off at 10am on her college campus so that she could prep for her noon final. But she never made it to her final.

Aisha Khan … has been missing since Friday morning. That is when her older sister said she left frantic text messages with her about a drunken man on the Edwards Campus she described as “creepy.” Faiza Khan said she dropped Aisha off at the campus around 10 a.m. Friday ahead of a noon final. The text messages started arriving within an hour.

“There’s a creepy guy that just came up to me, and he was harassing me,” Faiza said her younger sister told her in a message. She told local media outlets that Aisha “was just freaking out at that time. She didn’t know what to do. I guess she pushed him and she slapped him.” [cjonline]

I can’t count how many times I’ve been creeped out by harassing men – it often feels that as a woman in the American public we have to brace ourselves for street harassment. But Aisha is a girl in hijab – I can only imagine that her harasser must have said something really islamophobic and sexist to have deserved a slap. Finally, there’s the voicemail message she left her sister.

“Oh my gosh it was so scary,” Aisha said in her voice message. “My heart is like pounding. I’ve never got this scared in my life. Pick up your phones. I am freaked out right now.”

Faiza said she and a cousin went to the campus and found Aisha’s phone, book bag and iPod on a picnic table, but her sister was gone. [cjonline]  

Aisha went missing on Friday morning around 11am. It has been three days since she’s gone missing. Every minute counts right now. Her family has put out a reward for $10,000 for any information on her disappearance.

Aisha’s disappearance is only one in a long line of crimes in the South Asian American community that have happened in the past few weeks.

• On December 14th in Texas, a 61 yr old Pakistani named Yaqab Bham was attacked when doing an ADT home security installation inspection. Attacked by the home owner after being asked questions of where Bham was from, he had his ear bitten off and 10 broken ribs. [full story]
• On December 8th, a Hindu Sri Lankan professor in Champaign, Illinois named Dhammika Dharmapala was stabbed in his throat at a train station by a man who wanted to “save his country.” [full story]
• On December 4th, a turbaned Sikh man was stabbed in his upper torso at the Fresno airport. The man that attacked him was a 26 year old white man and was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon  and possession of a knife in an airport. [full story]
• On November 25th, a 32 year old Hindu man originally from Calcutta was attacked in San Jose in the grocery store parking lot. Six of his teeth were knocked out. His attackers spit on him and called him a terrorist. The attackers have not been found. [full story]

Most of the crimes mentioned above are not currently considered hate crimes by local police and local advocates are working hard to make the crimes recognized as such. It’s difficult to imagine, especially seeing the crimes listed side by side, how the incidents were not fueled by islamophobic and xenophobic hate.

One thing I’m sure of, the rise of crimes like those above are directly correlated to the rise in anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry that we see in popular media. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that Aisha Khan’s disappearance is one that was fueled by islamophobia as well. My prayers are with her family and I’m wishing for her safe return.

If in the Sacramento area, please join the Jakara Movement and the local community as they blanket the neighborhood talking to the community and posting reward bulletins. For more information and to RSVP, please visit the facebook page.

A memorial to Gaurav Gopalan via Washington City Paper

In the early morning hours of September 10th, the Desi community of D.C. was rocked when a local aeronautical engineer and theatermaker Gaurav Gopalan was found near death only two blocks away from his home. He died soon after. He was only 35. There had been confusion over if had been a hate crime (he was wearing women clothing at the time as an alter persona named “Gigi”) but there had been no visible signs of trauma. Today it was confirmed to be a homicide.

Gopalan, who was found unconscious near his Columbia Heights home in the early hours of Sept. 10, died after suffering sub-arachnoid hemorrhage—bleeding in the space between the brain and the thin tissues that cover it—”due to blunt-impact head trauma,” according to Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. “The manner of death is homicide.” … The news comes in the wake of initial confusion about the case, and amid a string of shootings involving transgender women in the District. (Gopalan was wearing women’s clothes when he was found by a passerby on the 2600 block of 11th Street NW.) [citypaper]

Losing someone suddenly is tragic but for it to be a potential hate crime just highlights the incredible injustices in this world. Khush DC sent out a release this week:

This tragedy comes during an especially troubling time for Washington D.C.’s LGBTQQIA community.  A number of incidents involving sexual and gender minority individuals, particularly those affiliated with the transgender community, have occurred during recent months.  We stand in solidarity with all of our communities at this time, and ask everyone to exercise personal safety measures.  We also urge the MPD to fully and thoroughly investigate the incidents that have occurred. [khushdc]  

Though I didn’t know Gaurav, it sounds like he was a bright personality.

Gaurav Gopalan, an aeronautical engineer who brought boundless energy, a vigorous intellect and startling insight to theater in the Washington area…Gopalan served as a director, dramaturge and production manager, primarily for Constellation Theatre and WSC Avant Bard. “He contacted me out of the blue in 2006 and said he would do anything for us, he was so devoted to the plays of Shakespeare,” said WSC Artistic Director Christopher Henley. Gopalan, Henley said, told him that “to work with us on them would be a dream.” [dctheatrescene]

Our thoughts are with his family, his partner and his community at this time. We hope the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department follows up on this crime expediently and everyone in D.C. remains vigilant and safe.