‘Go back to your country’: Disturbing incident on transit bus

Editor’s note: A link in this article directs to a video with some language that may not be suitable for all viewers.

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A racially charged outburst in Vancouver caught on video is now making the rounds online.

The footage features a woman targeting another passenger on a bus for speaking a foreign language.

Randy Keeping posted the footage. He says it happened on Saturday on the #41 bus near Joyce and Kingsway.

“The lady in the pink shirt did get up and go to the bus driver and she was mentioning something about, ‘If you don’t make them shut up, I will’ type thing. Then she sat back down in her seat. That’s pretty much when I started recording,” he tells NEWS 1130.

It started when a woman went off on another for speaking a language other than English. In the video, she appears to believe the woman who was speaking a different language was saying inappropriate things about other passengers.

“You’re being racist. Drop it,” she said in the video.

The person who was targeted said she had every right to speak in whatever language she wants to.

“I don’t give a s**t if you have a right,” the attacker responded.

“Go back to your country,” she added.

“I think she was trying to stick up for [another passenger], but I think she just did it in the wrong way,” Keeping tells us.

In the video, most people on the bus just stood there and watched it happen. But Keeping eventually spoke up.

“They can speak any language they want. I’m First Nations. This is all of our land. This is all of our people’s land,” he said.

“I felt a lot of hate and tension on the bus,” Keeping explains. “I just couldn’t stand by and watch it. It was just something that I’ve seen far too much. A lot of people don’t stand up for other people when they need it.”

He adds he’s not trying to shame the woman for her behaviour.

“I would like her to maybe learn a lesson from this. I’d like people to watch and learn to stand up when something’s wrong. Maybe she was trying to do something nice for that lady — I don’t want her to get into any sort of trouble for it. But [I hope everyone] learns a lesson.”

Keeping feels the situation could have been handled in a more polite way. “It is a public bus. There are going to be other people that speak other languages in Vancouver.”

TransLink is looking into the incident.

– With files from Lasia Kretzel

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