Hate Crimes Against Asians in Southland Rose in 1995

Hate crimes against Asians increased sharply in Southern California last year, more than in any other region in the country, according to a new study scheduled for release Tuesday.

Reported cases of anti-Asian violence in 1995 in Southern California increased nearly 80%, to 113 from 63 the previous year, according to the Washington-based civil rights group National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.

“This is an alarming trend,” said Stewart Kwoh, president of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California. “We’re not just seeing graffiti of racial epithets; we’re seeing people killed for being Asian.”

Kwoh noted that in January, Vietnamese American Thien Minh Ly, 24, was stabbed to death at a high school tennis court in Tustin. Investigators found a letter in which a suspect, Gunner J. Lindberg, 21, bragged to a friend: “Oh, I killed a Jap a while ago.”

A quarter of the 458 anti-Asian incidents reported nationwide occurred in Southern California, according to the study, which compiled statistics by regions rather than states, counties or cities, utilizing federal, state and local statistics from law enforcement and community agencies.

Among the most serious incidents, there were two racially motivated slayings, 93 assaults, 35 aggravated assaults, 25 robberies, 31 harassment cases, 13 police abuse incidents and 76 acts of vandalism.

Los Angeles County, with 53 incidents, had the most anti-Asian crimes in the nation, according to Ron Wakabayashi, executive director of the county Human Relations Commission.

But Wakabayashi said the figure--up from 29 in 1994--also is high because the county has a population of 9 million, a 16-year-old hate crime record-keeping system and an established Asian American community going back more than a century.

“Our large number has an aspect of good news,” Wakabayashi said. “It is a reflection that there is more vigorous reporting and investigation to deal with hate crime.”

Even so, he believes that a significant number of racially motivated crimes against Asians go unreported.

Asian American leaders say the latest statistics reflect a growing intolerance of immigrants, especially in California.

“When politicians start scapegoating immigrants, it doesn’t take long for the rest of the population to start emulating,” said Michael F. Yamamoto, president of the Multicultural Bar Alliance, an organization of minority bar associations in Los Angeles.

Of the 53 anti-Asian crimes committed in 1995 in Los Angeles, 12 were preceded by anti-immigrant remarks, said Maria Haro, co-author of the county’s 1995 hate crime report.

The nonprofit consortium was established in 1992 by the nation’s three major Asian American legal service centers--Los Angeles-based Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York.

Anti-Asian incidents also rose in Northern California and on the Eastern Seaboard, two other regions with large Asian populations. Anti-Asian crimes increased to 91 from 83 in Northern California and to 61 from 56 in New York, the report said.

Statistics on anti-Asian violence are not precise because there is no single data collection model.

Kwoh, who represented the family of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American engineer beaten to death in Detroit 14 years ago by white unemployed auto workers who mistook him for a Japanese, says the latest statistics ought to persuade local, state and federal officials to allocate resources to combat racially motivated crimes through education of the public and law enforcement officials.

Violence against Asians has increased every year since the consortium began the annual audit three years ago.

Yamamoto noted with irony that often, assailants purport to be angry with one Asian group but mistakenly end up choosing a victim of another ethnicity.

From coast to coast, xenophobia, economic instability and fear led the perpetrators to strike out at Asians, according to the report.

In the San Francisco suburb of Novato last November, Chinese American Eddy Wu was stabbed repeatedly in a supermarket parking lot by Robert Page while he was carrying his groceries. In his confession, Page said he didn’t have anything to do when he got up on Nov. 8. So he decided, “What the f---, I’m gonna kill a Chinaman,” he said. He also admitted that he wanted to kill an Asian because they “got all the good jobs.” Page pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

In New York’s Queens section, in May 1995, four masked men broke into and ransacked a Pakistani home, taking more than $10,000 in cash and jewelry. One suspect told the family, “You Indian people come here and take our jobs. We are fighting for our country.”

“Asians are thought of as immigrants and foreigners who don’t belong here,” said Angela Ancheta, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus. “Sometimes they are viewed as inferior, sometimes as superior--and in competition for jobs.”

In California and in the nation, people of Chinese descent were the most frequent victims of hate crimes, followed by Vietnamese and Koreans.

The study said violence against Asians is grossly underreported because of language, cultural barriers and incomplete record-keeping by law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement officials “too often” fail to classify a hate crime out of ignorance, personal prejudice, insensitivity or lack of training, it added.

For example, in New York City, the police classified 18 out of 20 reported incidents as racially motivated crimes in 1995, but the consortium audit discovered an additional 40 suspected or proved anti-Asian incidents, the report said.

Eleven states did not collect hate crime statistics in 1995, the report said, and many others had incomplete records.

Councilwoman Judy Chu of Monterey Park, the only city in the continental United States with an Asian majority, said education and vigilance are the only solutions.

“We must make sure that hate crimes are reported as such,” she said. She added that law enforcement officials, too, must be better educated and trained to recognize the problem.

Ancheta said many Asians, especially the new arrivals, don’t know that there are laws against racially motivated crimes.

He suggested that the legal definition of hate crimes be expanded to include crimes motivated by immigrant status. In a significant portion of the reported cases, victims were threatened with comments such as “Go back to your country.”

There was one area of improvement. In the workplace, anti-Asian incidents fell by 60% nationwide, according to the report.

“My guess is that the fallout benefit of being forced to encounter each other increases exposure and that leads to increased understanding,” said Yamamoto. “At least, I hope that’s what has happened here.”