A Muslim family based in Vancouver is speaking out after a man approached a soon-to-be grandmother in a parked car and went on a racist tirade.
Daily Hive received an email from a man who told us that his wife’s mother was visiting from out of town, as his wife is pregnant with their first child and will soon give birth.
We’re keeping their personal information private for safety reasons.
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His mother-in-law landed in Vancouver on Sunday, November 27.
“This is her first trip ever to a new country, and I’m very sad that she had to live this terrible experience just a couple of days after she arrived,” the man said.
The incident began in the afternoon on Wednesday, November 30, the night after a snowstorm spread across Metro Vancouver. The husband tells us that his wife and mother-in-law were driving and because she had never seen snow before, she decided to film.
His wife elected to park in the empty parking lot at Wings Restaurant because the parking lot at the store she was visiting was dangerous due to snow accumulations.
“My wife asked her mom to stay in the car and told her that she’ll be back in five minutes, just the time to pick up the goods from the store.”
The husband points out that after his wife left the vehicle, his mother-in-law was still recording and that a man was standing at the other end of the parking lot.
“Then he slowly started walking towards my mother-in-law, then he looked back again at my wife to make sure she didn’t look back, then he continued until he started talking to my mother-in-law.”
Be warned that this video is hard to watch:
The video begins with the man approaching the mother-in-law about the parking spot, saying that the parking spot her daughter parked in wasn’t for the establishment she went into.
His language when speaking to the mother-in-law is incredibly demeaning and degrading.
“You… are a person with your hat who follows rules. You have religious rules. You’re a Muslim. Right?”
When he speaks of the mother-in-law’s hat, he’s referring to her hijab, mocking it.
Once he realizes that the mother-in-law can’t speak English, his tone gets increasingly aggressive.
“You’re a bad person,” he says repeatedly.
He then says, “Don’t do it anymore,” as if she was the one who was driving.
The mother-in-law responds in French, “d’accord,” and you can hear her tone become increasingly frustrated and frantic.
“Follow the rules. Okay? Please? Please follow the rules,” he says.
“You’re doing a bad thing. You’re bad. You are bad.”
He references her hijab once more, saying, “Your hat shows you’re bad.”
“Your stupid rules are bad.”
He also claims she can understand him, calling her a liar and a hypocrite and saying she’s “full of sh*t.”
The husband told us that the mother-in-law didn’t understand what he was saying, but she knew he wasn’t a friend. He went on to say that she had closed the door, and she was scared and crying. He suspects that the man waited for his wife to leave because he didn’t have the “courage to talk to the younger woman, and that tells you a lot about this kind of person.”
“He only targets the weakest so he can get away with it easily.”
The husband added that he’s sharing the racist encounter from the Vancouver parking lot so that the man at the centre of the tirade thinks twice before directing his anger at another Muslim family or anyone else he decides to share his hatred with.
Burnaby RCMP told Daily Hive that this incident is under investigation.
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