South Asian task force in place to tackle violence

The Group of 10: Integrated Community Response to South Asian Youth Violence has a mandate to develop and promote a strategy to reduce violence among young people in the community. The plan is due by the end of November.

On Thursday, federal Multiculturalism Minister Raymond Chan and Minister of Health Ujjal Dosanjh named the 10 volunteer members of the group, selected from a cross-section of South Asians living in Vancouver. They include youth workers, an RCMP officer, a probation officer and high-school teachers.

“Our goal is to reduce violence,” said member Andrea Dulay, an educational-behaviour specialist of Sikh heritage. “It’s added pressure that we need to prepare this action report in the next three months.”

She said the timing is right to prepare a plan to deal with youth violence.

“I haven’t heard of any gang-related murders in Vancouver’s Indo-Canadian community over the past couple of months,” said Ms. Dulay, who is married and has three young children. “But it’s a crisis when you have males dying under similar circumstances. People are still talking about it. Violence is a reality in all communities, but it’s an important concern among South Asians in the Lower Mainland.”

Group member Kashmir Besla, a Sikh, is the single mother of a 14-year-old boy and lives in a large Indo-Canadian community in Surrey.

“My background is in clinical psychology,” she said. “My main goal is to bring troubled children closer to their families instead of sending them away.”

Ms. Besla said violence prevention begins in the home, and finding new ways to reach parents scared to speak about problems with their children will be part of the committee’s task.

One Indo-Canadian mother who identified herself only as Jas is attending counselling for South Asian parents. She said her 17-year-old daughter became involved with gangs at the age of 15.

“My daughter started getting marijuana from the teenagers in the neighbourhood in secret while I was at work. Then she tried crystal meth and drinking alcohol. A year later, she was involved in an armed robbery with older kids and was almost recruited into prostitution.”

Jas said that after a year of weekly counselling and improved communication, mother and daughter are slowly getting past their difficult experiences.

“We talk more and I keep telling her I am always here for her.” B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal said the message of good parenting must be spread throughout the Lower Mainland’s South Asian community.

“There is a large group of young kids alienated from their parents who have come from India,” he said yesterday.