SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — South Asians in the U.S. experienced a spike in hate violence and rhetoric during the 2016 presidential election, similar to levels that haven’t been recorded since the year that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to a report released Wednesday by South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT).

The report, titled, “Power, Pain and Potential,” was prepared by the non-profit advocacy group and catalogued more than 200 incidents of hate violence and xenophobic political rhetoric directed toward South Asian, Muslim, Middle Eastern, Hindu, Sikh, and Arab communities between Nov. 15, 2015, and Nov. 16, 2016.

Of the incidents in the report, 140 were documented cases of hate violence, while 67 were acts of xenophobic rhetoric. According to the report, approximately 95 percent of those instances were driven by anti-Muslim sentiment.

“I think that the spike in hate violence really quantifies the level of suspicion and mistrust that many of our community members continue to experience, feel and see on a daily basis,” Suman Raghunathan, executive director of SAALT, told reporters Wednesday during a conference call.

The report also revealed that approximately one in five of the cases of xenophobic statements came from President-elect Donald Trump. SAALT is a nonpartisan organization, and does not endorse political candidates, however, Raghunathan said the report was crucial at this time, given the nation’s political debate and policies as it moves forward under a new administration.

The report’s release comes at the same time South Asians find themselves as one of the country’s most rapidly developing communities. According to the 2010 Census, 2.84 million Asian Indians lived in the United States, up from 1.67 million in 2000.

“I think that the hate violence statistics that we have tabulated … really typifies, unfortunately, the growing groundswell of hostility many of our community members continue to experience, even as our communities continue to grow rapidly [nationwide],” Raghunathan said.

SAALT has been tracking such statistics of hate crimes against the South Asian community for more than a decade, and noted that the uptick in these incidents parallels an overall increase in hate crimes nationwide. The FBI reported in 2015 a 66 percent rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes compared to the previous year.