Indians killed
© Kranti Shalia/APSrinivas Kuchibhotla (left), who was killed, with his wife, Sunayana Dumala, and friend Alok Madasani.
The motivation behind the attacks on Indian Americans is a combination of seeing South Asians as terrorists and Indians as usurpers of high-tech jobs.

On February 22, Adam Purinton of Olathe, Kansas, was at Austin's Bar and Grill. He saw two men, both from India, and began to argue with them. "Get out of my country," Purinton said to the two men, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, and Alok Madasani, 32, both tech workers at the multinational technology firm Garmin. Purinton began to yell racist slurs at the men, got out his gun and began to shoot. A bystander, Ian Grillot, rose from his hiding place to catch the gunman. He was then shot through his chest and hand. Kuchibhotla died, while Madasani survived his wounds. Grillot, one of whose vertebrae was fractured, also survived. "I was just doing what anyone should have done for another human being," he said from his hospital bed.

A week later, on March 2, Harnish Patel, 43, a businessman, was shot dead just outside his house in the quiet town of Lancaster, South Carolina. Patel ran a Speed Mart—a convenience store that was popular in his area—and was known as a popular employer as well as a kind man. While the Federal Bureau of Investigation has decided to investigate the Kuchibhotla killing as a hate crime, Lancaster County Sheriff Barry Faile said: "I don't have any reason to believe that this [the killing of Patel] was racially motivated."

The next day, on March 3, Deep Rai was working on his car in the driveway of his house in the East Hill neighbourhood of the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington. A white man wearing a mask confronted Rai, a Sikh who wears a turban, and said: "Go back to your own country." Then he shot Rai in the arm. Rai survived the attack. Kent Police Chief Ken Thomas said that his department was taking the attack very seriously.

The theme of "get out of my country" or "go back to your own country" is central to these attacks. A new website by Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ) asks people to report hate crimes (standagainsthatred.org). The impetus for this website was the attacks on East Asian Americans as a consequence of Donald Trump's anti-China rhetoric, Karin Wang of AAAJ said. "It is reminiscent of the 1980s when Japan was portrayed as the economic enemy," Karin Wang noted. Japan was seen at the time as a threat to the United States auto industry. Now China is depicted as a thief of U.S. jobs.