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Increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans

Aziz Haniffa writes from Washington
Even as federal authorities claim that violent crime in the United States has declined, hate attacks on Aslan Americans appear to have gone up.
The 27-page report of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC) estimates that hate crimes against Aslan Americans increased by 17 per cent in 1996. The report, a copy of which was given to U.S. Attorney-General Janet Reno, said there were 534 suspected and confirmed incidents motivated by racial prejudice and animosity against Asian Americans.
"These figures reflect a steady Increase in violence directed against Asian Pacific Americans in the past four years — and contrasts with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) findings that violent crime declined by seven per cent in 1996." said the report titled "The 1996 Audit of Violence Against Asian Pacific Americans: The Violent Impact On A Growing Community.
Asian Americans experienced Increasing numbers of racially motivated incidents at their homes, schools and workplaces. the report said. A large number of these took place In .public housing.
' Assailing the "tendency of the mainstream media to view anti-Asian incidents as isolated. local occurrences rather
than as a pattern of increasing violence against Asian Pacific Americans nationwide," the report said this led "to the widespread misperception that no organised federal response is necessary."
"While xenophobia continued to motivate incidents of violence, hate crimes targeting Asian Pacific Americans involved in legitimate political participation emerged as a disturbing trend in 1996," the report noted.
According to NAPALC executive director Karen K. Narasaki, the campaign finance controversy had become the new xenophobic phenomenon to perpetuate the stereotype of Asian Americans as foreigners who are suspect. The scandal, which broke last fall and is the subject of congressional and Justice Department probes, was triggering a high numper of antiAsian hate crimes reports so far this year.
Director Narasaki said this had compounded xenophobia, spurred by last year's passage of a restrictive Immigration reform bill, welfare legislation denying benefits to legal immigrants and a "general anti-minority rhetoric" that intensified during the 1996 election campaign.
The NAPALC. which has conducted three earlier surveys of violence against Aslan
Americans, said that data continued to be difficult to obtain, incomplete and limited by widespread under-reporting. Eight states - Alaska, Georgia. Hawaii, Indiana. Mississippi. Missouri, New Mexico and Oklahoma - did not collect hate crime data in 1996 despite the Hate Crime Statistics Act.
"By failing to document and respond to hate crimes accurately and completely, law enforcement adds to the perception that they are apathetic toward hate motivated violence and insensitive to the concerns of minority communities." the report noted. "This perception leads victims of hate crimes reluctant to report." It added.
Like in the preceding two years, "racial motivation was confirmed in over 90 percent of the reported incidents (in 1996), with the balance categorised as suspected bias cases," the report noted. Harassment jumped 161 per cent and 53 per cent from 1995 and 1994 respectively, while vandalism increased 48 per cent from 1995, and 177 per cent from 1994. There were two murders, two bomb threats, two incidents of arson, and a cross burning, it noted.
Hate Incidents at a person’s business or place of employment increased a significant 117 per cent. Asian American students "were vulnerable on college campuses, where Incidents increased 100 per cent."
mostly through hate messages sent on e-mail.
In one incident at the University of California at Irvine last fall, hate messages with racial epithets targeted 60 Asian American students. A former student was charged with sending the messages, the first instance of prosecution for an alleged federal hate crime in cybpjspace^ort sald political candidates throughout the country and college students campaigning against Proposition 209. the anti-affirmative action initiative in California, "frequently experienced hate calls and vandalism 10 K Arkansas.
Kansas. Kentucky. Louisiana. Nebraska. South Carolina. Utah and Wyoming "continue to have no criminal laws addressing racially motivated crimes." "Federal civil rights statutes remain too limited in their scope because they require the victim to be engaged tn a federally protected activity and cover only race, colour, religion and national origin." it said.
It complained that election and appointed officials "too often resorted to stereotypes and scapegoatings as well as racially divisive rhetoric, that foster and perpetuate animus against Asian Pacific Americans " This was "especially virulent" last year, the report said.
— India Abroad News Service