Jump in Violence Against APAs

Photo by Michael Okoniewski

Students marched from Syracuse University to the county district attorney's office on Monday to protest the DA's report on an investigation of alleged racial violence at a local Denny's. The incident was the latest high-profile attack on Asian Americans.

Annual audit shows 17-percent increase over previous year

BY ALETHEA YIP

Thien Minh Ly had always made friends easily. Most people seemed to be drawn to his gentle, warm spirit. So, when the 24-year-old aspiring doctor was brutally stabbed to death on a high-school tennis court, everyone close to him was baffled.

After a Sunday-night dinner last Jan. 29, Ly, who had recently graduated from Georgetown University with a master's degree, set out--as he often did--to go rollerblading. But in the yard of Tustin High School, where Ly was once an honors student, two white men knocked him to the ground; stabbed him more than a dozen times in the face, heart, and back; stomped on his head; and slashed his throat.

Police initially categorized the case as a robbery, but when a letter written by one of the accused attackers, Gunner Lindberg, to a former jail-cell mate was discovered, it was clear that this particular crime was motivated by race, according to reports.

The letter graphically described the stabbing: "Oh, I killed a Jap a while ago."

Ly's brutal murder was a shock to the community. It also reflected the marked increase in hate crimes against APAs in 1996, according to the recently released report by the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC).

The fourth annual audit of violence against APAs documented 534 incidents of hate crimes in 1996--a 17-percent jump from the 1995 figure of 458 incidents against APAs, despite an FBI finding that overall violent crime declined 7 percent in 1996.

"When I found out about the increase of hate crimes, I couldn't believe it," said Thu, Ly's sister. "I always believed that as time went on that there would be more tolerance. But I know personally that is not true. This has immensely impacted the whole family and has taken us all the way to hell and makes you come back. It is a loss that the whole family cannot yet accept. We are still in denial."

Racism fueled by growing anti-immigrant sentiment and a burgeoning APA community in some parts of the country all continued to be the main motivation for perpetrators, according to the report's authors. But in 1996 a new trend emerged that community advocates found extremely disturbing: hate crimes targeting APAs involved in legitimate political participation.

One of those targets was Ho Chung, who was making his bid for re-election to the city council in Garden Grove, Calif. Chung had received threatening phone calls telling him to go back to Korea, that this was not his country. Vandals also spray-painted his campaign signs with swastikas and anarchy symbols while white candidates' signs nearby were left untouched.

Despite the phone calls--which he also received in 1992 when he first ran, successfully, for city council--and the graffiti, he tries to remain positive.

In Garden Grove, Calif., a campaign poster for a Korean American city council candidate was spray-painted with a swastika. Nearby signs for white candidates were left untouched.

"It felt very uncomfortable," said Chung, who immigrated to the U.S. more than 30 years ago. "They told me to go back to Korea and that this was not my country, it's theirs. That's not true. ... You can't get rid of people in the mainstream seeing us as foreigners. But I think that gradually we can try to generate more joint efforts to help each other and to peacefully work together and create harmony through diversity, communication, and dialogue."

Also targeted were APA students campaigning against Proposition 209, the California initiative that eliminated affirmative action for women and racial minorities in public education, contracting, and employment.

At the University of California at Irvine, where nearly 50 percent of the student population is Asian Pacific American, a student opposing the anti-affirmative-action measure received answering-machine messages that were vulgar and hateful. One of them said: "I just found your flyer on my car for 'No on 209,' and all I have to say is that affirmative action is discriminatory ... and if you don't agree with that you little fuck, just because you're yellow or whatever, that's not my goddamn problem. You little fuck face. And if I ever catch you around here again putting anything on my car, I'll tell you what, you little cocksuck, I'll cut your fucking hands off and feed them to you, you little motherfucker. ... And I hope you and all you little yellow fuckers die."

In late March, a student activist at the University of California at San Diego came home to a similar telephone message: "... As far as abolishing affirmative action, actually that will help a lot of your slant-eyed relatives, since a lot of them are denied admittance to colleges right now to make room for dumb niggers and dumb spicks. ... So, fuck you buddy. ... I hope you get cornholed in jail ..." At least two other students had received similar messages but did not report them to law-enforcement agencies.

While these particular attacks were extremely disturbing, they did not entirely surprise many advocates, given the current sentiment toward APAs coupled with other controversial measures, said Karen Narasaki, executive director of NAPALC.

"It's the whole political climate," Narasaki said about the increase in hate crimes aimed at APAs trying to get involved in the political process. "In 1996 you had a lot of divisive issues on the ballot. Affirmative action was hotly debated. It is highly emotional and I think that Asian Americans are becoming more visible on all levels ..."

She added, "My concern is that the community will take this as a message that they should fade back into the woodwork. Instead, we need to be doubly committed to being involved in the process."

But politicians such as Chung are optimistic about the future.

"I'll never give up," he said. "I'm a strong guy and I was supported by the fact that there is a majority out there that accepts a candidate who is willing to work hard, and they care about the quality of your work--not your skin color, your figure or your face, or my accent or my culture. Otherwise I would not have been elected--twice."

Still, a pervasive motivation for hate crimes against APAs is intolerance and racism as illustrated in the Ly killing, said Julie Su, a staff attorney for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) in Southern California. Su has advocated for prosecutors to add on the hate-crime special circumstance to the case.

"This was part of a pattern of ever rising incidents of anti-Asian violence--one of the most tragic examples of what can happen to an Asian American in a society in which there is still a great deal of racism and anti-Asian sentiment," Su said of the Ly case. "But in many ways this was a wake-up call. Many people were galvanized to speak out and fight back."

Initially, local law enforcement labeled the case as a robbery, perhaps gang-related, according to media reports. It was not until lobbying from groups such as APALC and the Vietnamese Community of Orange County that police investigated a possible hate motive for the crime.

When a letter from Lindberg to a former cell mate graphically described the stabbing and included the statement, "Oh, I killed a Jap a while ago," was turned over to police, it confirmed the community's suspicion. Further investigation turned up neo-Nazi paraphernalia in the apartment the two attackers shared and revealed a long history of affiliation with white-supremacist groups.

Domenic Christopher, who was Lindberg's accomplice, was 17 at the time of the murder but was prosecuted as an adult. Christopher was found guilty of first-degree murder on April 3, 1997, and with the special circumstance of a hate crime, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Jury selection recently began on Lindberg's trial.

"The first time when the police announced that it wasn't a hate crime, it didn't bother me," Thu Ly said. "What bothered me is that they didn't do any investigation before they announced that it wasn't a hate crime. Our society seems to not want to acknowledge that [hate crimes] happened and that, in a way, makes it OK for [perpetrators of hate crimes] to do it, that it's fine to take someone's life because of what they look like."

To Su, this case was in line with law enforcement's widespread apathy and reluctance to investigate and even track hate crimes.

"Like whenever a minority is brutally murdered, the police assumed that his killing was gang-related, a retaliation," Su said. "They also said that it had to be someone who knew him; because of the brutality of the murder it was a crime of passion.

"I tried to explain to them that hate crimes are crimes of passion. Racism is a salient form of passion. I didn't know right off that this was a hate crime, I just felt that when something like this happens, you should investigate the possibility of a hate crime.

Su continued, "But we see resistance to investigate crimes as hate crimes because of several factors, including that some are uncomfortable with this notion that this would not have happened under my watch. This country is extremely uncomfortable with race. There is also a lack of sensitivity or knowledge of hate crimes and what the signals are and what to look for."

As in previous years, NAPALC's report recommends that all law-enforcement agencies should be required to comply with the 1990 Hate Crimes Statistics Act and document hate violence accurately and completely. The report's other recommendations include having educational institutions establish reporting mechanisms and response procedures; funding to empower communities to respond to and prevent hate incidents; encouraging elected officials, public figures, and media to be leaders in fighting racism instead of perpetuating an anti-APA atmosphere; and passing the Hate Crimes Prevention Act sponsored by state Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., last year that expands the jurisdiction of federal law covering hate violence.

Representatives from the consortium's affiliates--the Asian Law Caucus, Asian Pacific American Legal Center, and Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund--met with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno last week to present the report and to review regional cases.

"The attorney general thought that the meeting went well and she appreciated receiving the information [to aid] in our effort to collect hate-crimes statistics," said Lee Douglass, spokesperson for the Justice Department. "We believe the report is useful as we work toward the president's Nov. 10th hate-crimes conference. I'm sure that many of the recommendations of the report will be on the agenda at the conference. ... We expect that issues such as trying to improve hate-crimes data collection and improving laws against hate crimes will be on the agenda was well."

Currently, under the 1990 Hate Crimes Statistics Act, the country's 16,000 law-enforcement agencies are required to collect hate-crime data. But lack of funding and education makes the annual tally sketchy, according to Su.

George Grotz, spokesperson for the FBI, refrained from commenting on NAPALC's findings because he said he was unfamiliar with the report's method of data collection and that increases and decreases in reported crimes are often subject to different factors, which sometimes paints an inaccurate picture of circumstances.

"I can't comment on the legitimacy of the figures because we were not involved in it," Grotz said.

"According to our figures, in 1994, 7,400 law-enforcement agencies in 43 states and the District of Columbia reported 211 incidences of anti-Asian and Pacific Islander violence. And in 1995, 9,600 law-enforcement agencies in 45 states and the District of Columbia reported 355 incidents of anti-Asian and Pacific Islander cases," he said. "That just shows that it is so very important to look at methodology."

Nevertheless, the authors maintain that the report's findings were severe undercounts because the community organizations that usually provide figures for the report were dedicating the bulk of their resources to dealing with the pressing issues of welfare and immigration reform.

"In Northern California there have been media reports that gay and lesbian and Jewish groups all reported a decrease in the number of hate crimes and on the national FBI drop in serious crimes," said Victor Hwang, a staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus. "The fact that our hate crimes went slightly up is cause for concern, especially because some community groups that we have relied on for a count of hate crimes reported that they were too busy because they had to deal with welfare reform. And that leads us to believe that the true number of hate crimes is higher."

In New York City, there was a 34-percent increase in hate crimes against APAs.

"I think the anti-immigrant sentiment combined with the density of New York contributes to the rise," said Liz OuYang, a staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York City and one of the authors of the report. "There is a marked increase in harassment, particularly hate messages, and it is indicative of people's resentment and intolerance toward Asian Americans right now. It is all contributing factors.

"We have just experienced a year where Asian Americans were used as political scapegoats and that had devastating measures introduced in Congress; and the anti-immigrant measures added to the stereotype of Asian Americans as foreigners and contribute to the underlying climate."

But for Thu Ly and her family, who are living with the impact of the consequences of intolerance and racism, the motivation for the killing of their oldest son and big brother does not weigh heavily on their minds.

"The emotional toll of him being killed, period, is overwhelming to the point where it doesn't really matter the circumstances of how he was killed," Thu Ly said, her voice trembling. "I lost more than a brother. I lost a friend I deeply respected and who was like a father to me.

"I don't even have the words to describe the horror. It is a loss that the whole family cannot yet accept. We are still in denial," she continued.

"Even now--a year and a half since he was killed--when my parents are talking they would call out [Thien's] name like they used to, when he was alive. But then they realize what they're doing and then the sadness and pain starts all over again. ... I don't feel that there will ever be peace for my family."

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