Search left many APIs in Boulder feeling stigmatized

By Joyce Nishioka

Three weeks after a University of Colorado student was abducted and gang-raped west of Boulder, Colo., five of the six suspects are in custody and the other is dead, an apparent suicide.

Kao Nick Vang, an 18-year-old resident of nearby Broomfield, Colo., and his16-year-old cousin, Cheu Vang, were arrested Sept. 4 on suspicion of second-degree kidnapping and first-degree sexual assault in the Aug. 29 incident. Steven Yang, 19, Johnny Lee, 17, and Sonny Lee, 23, were apprehended 10 days later in Green Bay, Wis.

Then two days after that, on Sept. 16, Green Bay police closed in on the hotel room where 20-year-old Kather Yang was believed to be staying. A man stepped in view of police, then shot and killed himself. Though the coroner has yet to make a positive identification, Green Bay police are 99 percent sure the man was Kather Yang, according to Jana Petersen, Boulder director of public affairs.

Though police there have some idea as to why the four suspects fled to Green Bay, they are not saying what that reason might be. “It’s critical to the investigation,” explained Jennifer Bray, a Boulder public affairs coordinator.

Steven Yang and the Lees are fighting extradition to Colorado, where they are likely to face charges of kidnapping and sexual assault. The Boulder County District Attorney’s Office has already charged Kao Nick Vang and Cheu Vang with seven felonies, including three counts of first-degree sexual assault. Cheu Vang, was charged as an adult; both could be sentenced to life if convicted.

To Police Chief Jim Hughes, the Aug. 29 assault was one of the worst gang rapes he has seen in his 22 years with the Boulder Police Department. The 20-year-old victim, who had been walking alone, reported that she had been forced into a minivan and driven into the foothills, where six men raped her for two hours. After being released, she was treated for a head injury at the Boulder Community Hospital.

That all six suspects were Hmong and the victim white increased tension among the largely educated, affluent populace, of whom 93 percent are white and only 2.4 percent Asian American.

The Boulder Daily Camera ran repeated descriptions of the suspects as “Asian males...black hair, brown eyes,” and it noted that the victim feared retaliation. Soon Asian American men of all ethnicities came under suspicion, and rather than rally in solidarity, some railed against the Hmong, among the city’s newest and most vulnerable residents.

Petersen said Hughes has emphasized publicly that “the crime is not representative of any group,” she said. “The police got the tip that broke the case early on. There was no need for police to roam the area looking for six Asian men.” But police would not reveal any more about the tip, including what it was and when it came in, Bray said.

Some University of Colorado students said the descriptions were overly broad and unnecessary. CU senior Christine Park said her Korean American friend, a husky man with spiky hair, was handcuffed twice by Boulder police who thought he fit a suspect description. “It has gone that far,” said Park. “And this person had nothing to do with it.”

She continued, “In general, people feel Asians haven’t been distinguished” from one another. “That needs some attention.”

One Chinese American who requested anonymity said the mainstream population in general perceive Asians as the stereotypical model minorities. “They think, ‘Oh, Asians don’t do these things,’ so the [rape] was a shocker to Boulder’s general public,” she said.

Evelyn Hu-DeHart, chair of the ethnic studies department at CU, said that though some may have felt targeted, “there [was] no physical violence against any Asian Americans” that she knows of.

Still, Asian communities are not used to the sudden public attention this case has brought them.

“We rarely read about Asians, good or bad,” said Hu-DeHart, who is of Chinese descent. “Now Asians are in the newspaper every day. They are being portrayed every day. They are characterized as gang members. They are dangerous and armed. It’s portrayed as a frightening thing.”

She added: “That has an impact and may be why Asian students feel targeted. Inevitably it will create a deep impression that will linger long after the crime is solved.”

Greg Lee, public relations director for the Hmong Advisory Council called the case “the first major crime to hit the Hmong community.” He added, “We have heard about incidences in California and Minnesota, but we never heard of things like that in Colorado.”

At this point, the motives of the five surviving suspects is unclear, said Bray. However, she said police have confirmed that the six suspects were known gang members.

Many of the 5,000 to 6,000 Hmongs living in the Denver metropolitan area, which includes Boulder, arrived as refugees in the 1980s, decades after a post-1965 wave of educated Chinese, Japanese and Korean immigrants and generations after mostly agrarian Japanese American and Chinese American families first settled in the area.

Many of the Southeast Asian refugees—including Hmongs, Laotians and Cambodians—do not fit the model minority, said Hu-DeHart, editor of the new book Across the Pacific, Asian Americans and Globalization. “Their families are in crisis. Many parents don’t speak English and work two or three jobs. They are not able to work with schools because of language and lack of cultural affinity.

“For those families,” she said, “it’s not surprising to see gangs within the committees.”

Lee said Hmong high-school drop-out rates are increasing. “First generation immigrants saw education as one of the most important ways out of poverty.” Now, he said, young U.S.-born Hmong Americans are more influenced by peer pressure. “Students are pressured to do what their friends do, and they end up dropping out.”

Most of the youths who join gangs tend to U.S.-born, Vang said. “The kids are Americanized, but the parents still face educational, social and economic barriers. The parents don’t know how to create an environment to help the children.”

Many parents still use traditional methods of discipline, according to David Vang, associate director for the Lao Family Community of Fresno. Those might include “harsh words or hitting with the hand or a stick. They don’t want to stay home or stay in school so they run away and join gangs.”

The topic of Asian gangs has been “brought to the floor” by the case. “It’s a community phenomena,” said Hu-DeHart. “This is not just an us-versus-them problem but one within their own community.”

The Boulder area has seen at least three recent incidents in which Asian American gang members assaulted other APIs. Houa Her, was only 17 when shot to death last year on Halloween.

“This is not only a tragedy as far as the young woman, but also a tragedy within the Hmong community,” said Hu-DeHart of the rape. “Young men are so disconnected from society they form gangs and terrorize their own people first.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.