Photos are screenshots from CBS Boston’s channel on YouTube.
A ten-year-old Muslim girl in Massachusetts is getting death threats, reports CBS Boston.
The fifth grader at Hemenway Elementary in Framingham received two alarming notes that have drawn the attention of local police.
On Friday morning, the girl found a note in her classroom cubby calling her a “terrorist.”
“She was visibly upset, she was crying,” said her uncle Jamaal Siddiqui. “That’s not what Islam teaches, and that’s not what Muslims are.”
Her uncle said that Principal Elizabeth Simon visited each classroom telling the culprit to come forward with an apology and emailed parents condemning the incident.
On Tuesday morning, there was a second note that said, “I will kill you.”
The principal then quickly involved the superintendent and police, but the girl’s family has decided not to pull her out of class.
“If we take her out of school it’s just going to show that we can’t stand up to the situation,” said Siddiqui. “All she said is she wants to be as normal as possible. She doesn’t want to be treated differently.”
School officials and police have not been able to ID the handwriting or trace the paper yet.
Framingham School District Superintendent Robert Tremblay said in a press conference Wednesday that the victim and other students are not thought to be in imminent danger. He also said there should be a bigger conversation around hate across communities.
“This is a pervasive problem around hate that we have to take a stand on and address,” said Tremblay. “When you think about a child who’s in fifth grade, that kind of hate, you know, where does that come from? It’s not an innate feeling that a child would have. Where is this coming from? And the concern that we have is, how is this a teachable opportunity in our classroom?”
Simon said that classmates and parents have rallied around the student. “It’s absolutely devastating and I don’t want this to happen in my child’s school at all,” said one parent.
School officials said that all fifth-grade students wrote nice notes to the victim and the school is holding talks with each class to process the events, according to WXII 12 News.
“I’ve been through racism. My wife has been through racism. As adults we know how to cope with it,” Siddiqui said. “But for our niece, she doesn’t know why she’s being targeted.”
The FBI reported on Tuesday that hate crimes in the U.S. have increased by 17 percent this year.
The Wednesday press conference can be viewed below:
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