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Hate crimes up in US
19/11/2007 21:10 - (SA)
Washington - Some 9 642 people in the United States were victims last year of hate crimes targeting them because of their skin colour, religious belief, sexual orientation or ethnic origins, the FBI reported on Monday.
Some 60% of hate crimes targeted individuals or a collective of people, such as businesses or institutions, the statistics showed, while 39% were directed at property.
Of the attacks on people 13% involved serious aggression, including three murders and six rapes.
More than half the victims, 5 020, were attacked because of their race, and two-thirds of race crime victims were black, the statistics showed.
About 1 750 or around 19% of the total were attacked because of their religion, with 66% of those hate crimes targeting Jews and nearly 12% perpetrated against Muslims.
Some 1 472 hate crimes were based on a person's sexual orientation, the majority against male homosexuals, the statistics showed.
Around 1 300 people were attacked because of their ethnicity...nearly 63% of those hate crime victims were Hispanics.
The statistics represent only hate crimes reported by the police to the FBI in the 50 US states.
The data showed a rise of 7% in the number of victims compared with 2005, when 8 804 people were the target of hate crimes, and were almost identical to figures for 2004, when around 9 500 victims of hate crimes were reported to the FBI.
- SAPA
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