SURREY— The Indo-Canadian community rallied Wednesday to support elderly Punjabi women who were harassed by a racist couple at Surrey’s Aspen park
The Surrey-Newton couple accused of shouting racist comments at a group of Punjabi-Canadian seniors and children offered an apology after an outpouring of community support for the seniors, which also forced Surrey RCMP to do further investigation and possibly consider charges against the rude and abusive couple.
The couple’s offensive language was captured on video Wednesday at the park in the Newton neighbourhood.
“We’re in Canada, speak English. I don’t understand what you’re saying. You wanna say sh-to my face, speak English,” they could be allegedly heard saying in the video, which was shared to social media.
At another point, the group is told to “go back to India.”
Sahiba Sangha, whose grandmother was in the park Wednesday, told News 1130 that in addition to the hateful comments, garbage was thrown at the group.
“What are these women going to do? They are old women. They aren’t going to be able to do anything,” she said, adding the incident left her grandmother terrified.
Sangha says her grandmother was terrified.
“My grandma felt like they were raged to the point that they wanted to kill these women. They wanted to hurt them badly. Like they were shouting it in their faces,” she says.
According to Sangha, a neighbour also tried to intervene, but the couple did not let up.
“He tried stopping them, saying ‘don’t hurt them’. But they didn’t stop. They kept swearing. They kept shouting. They kept being angry, littering, throwing garbage on them, on their chairs, on their clothes,” she says.
Sangha is questioning how the RCMP handled the incident and has refused to meet with the couple.
“First, they were completely denying saying any racist slurs, they were denying that they ever threw garbage. Then over the hours, they said they were sorry about it.”
She says she spoke with the RCMP Monday afternoon, and heard that the couple offered their apologies through the Mounties.
“They said they’re sorry about it, but it’s pretty evident in the video was racist. And whatever they were saying was verbal harassment,” Sangha said, calling for the couple to be banned from the park.
The Surrey RCMP says it is still trying to figure out what happened, as the members of the group did not call police.
RCMP did receive a complaint from a third party on Wednesday, and a member responded to the incident.
Surrey RCMP Sgt. Elenore Sturko says there could be a possibility of charges, but so far there is no evidence anyone was hit with the garbage.
She urges people to contact police right away, and that the force does have Punjabi-speaking members if language is a barrier.
