Advocates in Waterloo region call for anti-hate campaign

Waterloo regional council is considering launching an anti-hate campaign after advocates shared an emotional plea for support.

It comes after a video posted to social media earlier this month gained worldwide attention. The footage shows a man from Waterloo, Ashwin Annamalai, speaking with a woman who tells him, “Indians don’t belong here.”

“We need to prevent these incidents from happening,” Annamalai told CTV News on Thursday.

Before moving to Waterloo in 2018, Annamalai said he never paid attention to the colour of his skin.

“People started aggressively gesturing towards me,” said Annamalai. “I got pushed in downtown Kitchener and verbally berated because of my ethnicity.”

Annamalai brought the issue to council on Wednesday night. He hopes to inspire the region to begin an anti-racism campaign spreading awareness through signage and messages on television and on the radio.

“It is regional council’s responsibility to tackle the issue of racism and hate in the community,” said Annamalai. “This is 100 per cent a local issue.”

Councillor Colleen James said she had her own encounters with racism.

“Education is the number one stress point as well as systemic change,” said James. “The easier of the two is education. Changing behaviours, asking people when they’re hearing things or saying things. ‘Why are you saying this? Where did this come from?’”

James said she would support an anti-racism campaign.

“If the campaign had the green light, which I absolutely believe it should, it would look like billboards and bus ads. We’ve seen this in other communities,” James said.

According to Statistics Canada, the Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo area combined had the fifth highest number of hate-related incidents reported to police. Waterloo Regional Police said about half of the hate-related incidents reported to them involved racism.

Cherri Greeno, the director of corporate affairs for the Waterloo Regional Police Service, said police are seeing an increase in reported hate-motivated crimes year-over-year.

“This is something that our service has been monitoring and taking quite seriously,” said Greeno.

She said education is something the police service does on a regular basis and supports.

Waterloo Region Chair Karen Redman told Annamalai, James and other delegates that regional staff will look into the request for a formal campaign.