Pinoy in Canada beaten to death by Indian-Canadian youths

A Filipino student was beaten to death by a group of Indian-Canadian youths in Vancouver, Canada over the weekend, sparking fears of racism among the members of the Filipino community there.

The Canadian press reported that Mao Jomar Lanot, a 17-year-old student attending the Charles Tupper Secondary School in Vancouver, died in hospital Saturday after he was beaten up, some two hours before he was confined.

The Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance (FCYA) expressed outrage over the incident and called on the Vancouver School Board to be more proactive in addressing the needs of Filipino youths who suffer from racism.

"We see the violence as being systematic of the greater problems that are going on and which are not being addressed in the school system and in the communities," FCYA’s Yvette Stephenson said in a statement.

Stephenson added that she was not aware of any specific tensions between Filipino and Indo-Canadian youths.

Police spokeswoman Constable Anne Drennan was also quoted as saying that the police department’s youth squad was not aware of any tensions between the two groups.

Drennan would not say whether or not the beating was racially motivated, though she confirmed that the incident started with racial slurs and taunts hurled by the Indo-Canadian youths against Lanot and his companions.

According to the report, Lanot and his three Filipino companions walked past the Indo-Canadian youths and "responded in kind." A verbal tussle ensued and continued until more Indo-Canadians stepped out of their cars and joined the fray.

Lanot and his companions fled when they saw they were outnumbered, but they were chased by the Indo-Canadians. The group apparently caught up with Lanot and started beating him with a blunt object.

Drennan said they have identified a key suspect in the incident, reportedly a student expelled from Lanot’s school.

School principal Jennifer Palmer said Lanot went home from school Friday to help his mother cook dinner. He then went to play basketball at a local community center and spoke to his mother over the phone at around 9:30 p.m.

It was reported that Lanot’s mother rushed to the hospital but was not able to see her son alive. Lanot and his family were said to have moved to Canada only recently.

"Violence such as this is tragic and shocking to all of us in our city. It is an unpredictable part of society that has touched our school community," Palmer said.

When asked if the incident was racially motivated, Palmer said she really wants "to focus on supporting our students today. We have had a tragedy in our school and bigger issues are not appropriate for today."

The Filipino community in Canada has, in the past, raised concerns about racism, which has targeted not only Filipinos but other minorities residing in this country.

Statistics from the Canadian government’s website show that Indians rank as the second largest group of immigrants in Canada, while Filipinos comprise the fourth largest group.

As of 2002, there were 28,815 Indian immigrants, nearly 13 percent of the total of 229,091 immigrants in Canada, while Filipino immigrants number about 11,000 or 4.8 percent of the total immigrant population.

Immigrants from China form the largest immigrant group in Canada, while Pakistani and Iranian immigrants comprise the third and fifth largest groups, respectively.