Groups decry
prejudice in America

By Pete Pichaske
Phillips News Service

WASHINGTON -- The slaying of five Asian Pacific Americans in the past 12 months, including the Aug. 12 shooting of a Filipino American in California, has national Asian-American groups calling for tougher federal legislation against hate crimes and greater national awareness of the prejudice they face.

"There's no excuse for Americans to continue to permit violence based on bigotry," said Karen Narasaki, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, at a news conference here yesterday.

Narasaki's was one of several organizations, representing a spectrum of ethnic groups, staging protests this week against violence aimed at Asian Americans. Vigils were planned in Washington, Los Angeles, Dallas and Chicago.

The trigger for the protests was the slaying two weeks ago of Joseph Ileto, the Filipino-American mailman shot by the man who earlier that day sprayed gunfire inside a Jewish community center, wounding five.

White supremacist Buford Furrow has been arrested in connection with the shootings.

Asian Pacific American leaders say that incident was only the latest aimed at their minority.

Since October of last year, four other Asian Americans, in Illinois and Maryland, have been shot and killed, apparently because of their ethnicity.

The groups also cited growing anti-Asian-American sentiment posted on the Internet.

And they pointed to what they said was unfair focus on national scandals involving Asian Americans.