Residents of Kansas city rally in support of Muslims

Rasa - Christian community stands together with Somali immigrants after a foiled bomb plot in Garden City targeted them.

News ID: 424515

Date: 23 October 2016 - 23:10

RNA - Garden City, US - Residents of this small American city rallied to support the local Muslim community after federal investigators uncovered a plot by local militia members to bomb an apartment complex where many of them live.

US law enforcement agencies announced the arrest of three men on October 14, charging them in a domestic "terrorism plot" to bomb an apartment complex in Wichita suburbs where several Somali immigrant families lived.

The Muslim community in Garden City - mostly refugees or asylum seekers from Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan - numbers about 1,000 out of a population of 28,000. Almost all of them work at Tyson's Fresh Meat packing factory in the area.

Reverend Denise Pass, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Garden City, organised the rally last week to show support for the Somali community.

"When I heard this tragic news, it came to my mind that we - as members of this community and as Christians - should support and protect the local Muslim community," Pass told Al Jazeera.

Tens of people from the community as well as members of her church took part in the rally around the apartment complex that was to be targeted.

Southwest Kansas state, where Garden City is located, is conservative but, according to Pass, it did not mean the community at large was racist, anti-Muslim, or against immigrants.

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