University of Michigan Students Hosts Hate Crime Symposium Commemorating 20th Anniversary of Vincent Chin's Death.

Vincent Chin was brutally beaten to death twenty years ago in Detroit simply because he was mistaken to be Japanese-American. Now, on the 20th anniversary of this historic hate crime and in the wake of Sept 11, University of Michigan students will commemorate the murder that sparked the Asian American civil rights movement with a weeklong Hate Crime Symposium.

ANN ARBOR, MI-- Vincent Chin was brutally beaten to death twenty years ago in Detroit simply because he was mistaken to be Japanese-American. Now, on the 20th anniversary of this historic hate crime and in the wake of Sept 11, University of Michigan students will commemorate the murder that sparked the Asian American civil rights movement with a weeklong Hate Crime Symposium. This event, held from Jan. 28-Feb. 1 in Ann Arbor, will host workshops and prominent Asian American speakers, including the award-winning journalist and activist Helen Zia.

The Hate Crime Symposium will kick off Monday, Jan. 28 with Debashish Mishra, founder and board member of South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow. He will present his report on the wave of hate crimes directed against South Asians in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. The following day features attorneys Roland Hwang and Harold Leon who were both involved in the Vincent Chin case. Other events for the week include a showing of the Oscar-nominated documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin," a candlelight vigil with students and community leaders, and a workshop entitled Healing the Scars of Hate."

Helen Zia will deliver the keynote address on the legacy of hate crimes from Vincent Chins murder to the violence after Sept 11. As a journalist in Detroit in the early 1980s, she was a spokeswoman for the Vincent Chin political movement and a founder of the American Citizens for Justice. Zia, an award-winning journalist, contributing editor to Ms. magazine, and the author of Asian American Dreams," has been an activist for feminist and Asian American rights for two decades.

On June 19, 1982, 27-year old Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat. At the time, the American auto industry was in a deep recession with much hostility directed at Japan. That night in Detroit, two white autoworkers mistook the Chinese American Vincent Chin for Japanese, cracked his skull with a baseball bat, and beat him to death. The two murderers pleaded guilty, but were only fined $3,780 and sentenced to 3 years probation for the crime. Neither man ever spent a full day in jail for Vincent Chins death.

Vincent Chins brutal murder and the light sentence for his murderers outraged the Asian American community. Rallies in Detroit, San Francisco, and Los Angeles awakened previously silent Asian American communities and attracted national media attention. Though justice was never gained for Vincent Chin, his death is immortalized as the symbol of the Asian American civil rights movement and changed the landscape of hate crime prosecution.

For full schedule and more information visit: http://www.umich.edu/~uaao/stopthehate.