With hate crimes on the rise, U.S. federal prosecutors have charged more than 40 people with bias-motivated crimes since January 2021, obtaining over 35 convictions, the Justice Department said Friday.   

Among those convicted were three white men found guilty by a jury in February in connection with the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a young man who was jogging in Brunswick, Georgia, in 2020.  

The department released the figures as officials marked the first anniversary of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and announced new measures to combat hate crimes. The law required the Justice Department to speed up a review of hate crime cases.    

The announcement comes less than a week after an 18-year-old gunman killed 10 people and injured three others at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. The Justice Department is investigating the shooting as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism.  

“No one in this country should have to fear the threat of hate-fueled violence,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a ceremony at the Justice Department. “The Justice Department will continue to use every resource at its disposal to confront unlawful acts of hate, and to hold accountable those who perpetrate them.”  

The number of reported hate crime prosecutions is up compared to recent years. A 2021 Bureau of Justice Statistics study found that federal prosecutors had charged an average of about 21 defendants and obtained an average of 19 hate crime convictions per year over a 15-year period. 

Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department faced criticism for deprioritizing civil rights enforcement. Trump administration officials rebutted the charge, with the Justice Department’s top civil rights official stating in January 2021 that his division had brought the highest number of hate crime charges during Trump’s final year in office.

He did not provide a number. A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to a VOA request for figures on hate crime prosecutions during the Trump administration.  

Federal law makes it a crime to target a victim because of their race, gender or gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation or ethnicity. Criminal offenses prosecuted as hate crimes range from acts of violence to damage to a religious property.    

Most hate crimes are prosecuted at the state and local level, and federal prosecutors bring charges in exceptional circumstances. In fact, the vast majority of hate crime cases referred to the Justice Department do not get prosecuted.

A hate crime conviction carries harsh penalties. But hate crimes are difficult to prosecute. To obtain a conviction, prosecutors must prove that the defendant was motivated by bias and not simply that the victim belonged to a protected class.   

Last year, hate crimes in 37 major U.S. cities increased by nearly 39%, with attacks on Asian and Jewish Americans accounting for the bulk of the increase, according to police data compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

In response to the surge in incidents, the Justice Department last year appointed an anti-hate crimes coordinator, tasked a top prosecutor to expedite a review of hate crime cases, and designated a civil rights coordinator in every U.S. attorney’s office in the country.   

In addition, Garland said the department is making use of its non-criminal tools to combat hate crimes. Along with the Department of Health and Human services, the Justice Department is issuing new guidance aimed at raising awareness of hate crimes and hate incidents; releasing $10 million in grant solicitations for new programs to create state-run hotlines and support community groups; and hiring the department’s first ever language access coordinator.  

“We know that language access is a key barrier to the reporting of hate crimes and hate incidents … and (the new official) will help improve knowledge, use, and expansion of the Department of Justice’s language resources,” Garland said.
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A gunman, allegedly motivated by a political hatred of Taiwan, opened fire on Taiwanese members of a Presbyterian church in Southern California Sunday, killing one person and injuring five others. 

Former Pastor Billy Chang was at the service in Laguna Hills, California. He spoke with VOA’s Mandarin service and described the attack Sunday, which started as members of the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church were having lunch. 

According to the Los Angeles Times, Chang pastored Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian for 21 years and left in 2020 to lead a church in Taiwan. Chang, who had recently returned from Taiwan, was the guest of honor at Sunday’s lunch, according to local media.

Authorities have charged the suspect, David Chou, of Las Vegas, with 10 counts in the attack, including one count of first-degree homicide. 

Police said Chou drove to Orange County in Southern California on Saturday, and on Sunday attended a lunch held by senior parishioners of Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian before he opened fire. 

John Cheng, a church member, charged Chou, allowing other church members to act. Chang said he picked up a chair and threw it at Chou, who fell on the floor. Chang said he and several other church members rushed Chou, holding him down and tying him up until authorities arrived. 

Cheng was shot and killed during the attack.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

VOA: Can you tell us your story with the church and what happened on the day of the shooting? 

Former Pastor Billy Chang: I flew back to the U.S. from Taiwan on May 9. Because I have been friends with the brothers and sisters in the church for over 20 years, they were very happy and hoped to see me. Their current pastor also kindly invited me to do a sermon on Sunday, May 15. I was happy to see a lot of people on that day. Then we had a worship service at 11 a.m. and a Sunday school at 11:30 a.m. This time, I shared my good experiences in Taiwan over the past two years. I was away for so long and I had many feelings to share. Then, we went to have lunch. 

Before that Sunday, the church would always provide a box lunch. After they finished Sunday school, people would go to the social hall to get a box lunch and eat at home to slow the spread of the coronavirus. This time, because I recently returned and the pandemic seemed to be slowing down in the U.S., the church announced it would have a special welcome party, and if people were willing to stay, we could set up a dozen round tables in the social hall and have extra food. About 100 people chose to stay and we ate together around 12:30 p.m. 

After lunch, some people asked to take pictures with me, so we moved to a stage at the front of the social hall. The stage in the hall is quite modern and not very high off the ground. People stood there, one after another, to take photos with me in groups of four to 10. 

It was around 1 p.m. when I heard gunshots. I can’t remember the exact time. I had no idea what was happening outside. When I turned my head and looked to my right, about 10 steps away, there was a man I didn’t recognize. He was dressed like a security guard. It was later confirmed that he was a licensed security officer, so he had equipment. He was wearing tactical gear like someone escorting an armored car. He started shooting and the sound was very loud as the social hall is an enclosed space that echoes. Everyone, including myself, was startled. Maybe at first, I did not realize the danger we were in. I thought it was a joke, a prank, someone playing with a toy gun to scare people. 

But after he fired three or four shots, I was shocked. Because he was shooting fast and kept shooting, I just stood there and felt that something was wrong. I turned my head to see that all my brothers and sisters were on the ground, hiding under the tables, and some of them were trying to escape. 

It seemed like he shot where there was something moving. I felt this was not right and needed to be stopped. We have a majority of older people in the church. I am not that young, but I felt I had to act. When I saw that his gun was not aimed at me, I felt like he was going to change bullets. I am not very familiar with guns, but he already had shot the gun nine or 10 times. 

So, I ran over. I grabbed a chair and threw it at him. He probably didn’t expect anyone to attack him. He was shocked, falling to the floor, and he dropped the gun. I quickly pinned him down. I was afraid he would pick up the gun again because the gun was on his left-hand side and still within his reach. I pinned down his hands and head. I said, “Hurry up, come and help me hold him.” Three parishioners helped me to pin his neck. 

Only then I saw that there was someone lying just in front of us, Dr. [John] Cheng. I could see that he was very badly wounded because he wasn’t moving at all, and it was very clear to see the blood on his back. My wife, Yu Ling, came over and quickly removed the gun, but I did not know if he had another gun. Later, they [the police] said he also had a gun strapped to his leg … that he had two guns. I don’t know if he had an accomplice, so my wife hid the gun in the refrigerator in the kitchen. We couldn’t find any ropes, so we used an orange electrical cord to tie up his legs and then we called 911. The police arrived in 10 minutes, and they took control of the situation. 

It was Dr. Cheng’s first time to come to the church. He was accompanying his mother, and I didn’t recognize him at first. He was lying on the floor, face down, and so I didn’t immediately realize that he was his mother’s son. She was taking pictures with me on stage. After the scene was under control, she couldn’t find her son, and then when she turned around, she cried, “That’s my son, that’s my son.”

Later, we found out that the murderer was preparing for a massacre. When he was locking the door, some of our parishioners saw him and thought that he was security who had come to lock the door, because we had rented this place and we had to leave by 1 or 2 p.m. There were two entrances that he had managed to lock, but there was also one in the kitchen that he probably didn’t know about. Some people escaped from that door and called 911. On one of the main entrances, he used chains to lock the door and he nailed the other door to the parking lot shut. I later heard that the keyholes were also sealed with super glue. 

VOA: Did the shooter say anything while he was there?  

Former Pastor Billy Chang: He didn’t speak a word or shout, that’s why I thought it was a joke and it was a toy gun, and other people thought the sound was a balloon popping. After he was subdued by us, he only spoke one sentence, that’s how I realized he was Chinese. At first some people thought he was from the Middle East. I knew he was Chinese when he said, “I can’t breathe” in Chinese, probably because someone was holding his neck, and then they loosened up a bit so the gunman could breathe. 

VOA: When the shooter arrived at the church on that day, did any parishioners see him or have any interaction with him? 

Former Pastor Billy Chang: I heard that he had come in during our worship. Our receptionist asked him to leave his name so that we could welcome him to our service, but he said he had been to the service before, and so he didn’t leave his name. Some of the church’s parishioners are very enthusiastic and every week they bring last week’s newspaper to give away for free. I heard the shooter took a Chinese newspaper and read it during the service. He didn’t seem to be serious about the worship service, and then he left. When he showed up again, that is when the shooting happened. 

VOA: Do we know anything about why the shooter drove from Las Vegas to Irvine, California, specifically to target this church? 

Former Pastor Billy Chang: Now that I think about it, he didn’t just do it randomly, he had a plan. I don’t know if he had relatives or friends in Irvine or around Orange County, but he probably knew that our church was one of the more crowded Taiwanese-speaking churches. I don’t think he only started to prepare on the day of the shooting. He brought chains and explosives, so he had already planned the attack. He had observed us, maybe he had even been here before. He may have picked us because he wanted to slaughter the most people possible. If I had not subdued him, I think there would be a dozen, or even a hundred people wounded or dead. 

These days there are many people who wonder if our church is preaching about Taiwanese independence or Taiwan politics. I welcome everyone to read about us on our church website. Whether it is Pastor [Albany] Lee or me, we all are preaching the gospel of God. We spread love, peace, charity, compassion and inclusion. 

VOA: Now we know the motive for this crime is politically related. Are you surprised? 

Former Pastor Billy Chang: In fact, this reflects the horrible situation Taiwan faces right now geopolitically, the threat of Chinese military. … [China considers self-ruled Taiwan a breakaway province and has not ruled out the use of force to reunify the two sides.] We very much hope that the international community can pay attention to it, from the security of individuals to Taiwan as a whole. At least we need to be able to defend ourselves, like we did with the chair, and not to be treated in such a ferocious way. 

VOA: We know that there is not much interaction between Taiwan’s pro-independence community and Taiwan’s pro-unification community in the U.S. What do you think will happen between the two communities after the shooting? 

Former Pastor Billy Chang: Honestly, I worry that confrontation between Taiwan’s pro-independence groups and Taiwan’s pro-unification groups will become more severe, and it is unfortunate that this incident happened. I hope that in Taiwan’s society we can have different political positions and be tolerant of each other. We really are one island, one life. If there is an external force to invade us, no one will be spared from such a tragic end, so we hope to learn from this incident to respect each other and to not use this incident to instigate confrontation. 

VOA: The suspect is facing 10 counts in the attack, including one count of first-degree murder. If you had the chance to see the gunman again, what would you say to him? 

Former Pastor Billy Chang: The victim has already sacrificed his life, no matter what, using the murderer’s life to pay for his life would not be able to heal the grief in our hearts. Of course, justice needs to be done, and I hope that justice will be used to let everyone know that this kind of act is unacceptable to the whole of society. As for the murderer, I really can’t understand what kind of message he wants to send, because he can hate some innocent elders and kill such a peaceful group for his political philosophy. He wanted to exterminate all of us. If I take a step back and think about it, if I advocate that Taiwan should become independent, is this a capital crime? Is this an unforgivable sin that must lead to the death of the other party? If I think that if I want to love someone, I must pay the price of life. What is the reasoning behind this? I don’t understand his logic and I have no words to say to him.
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Relatives of the 10 Black people massacred in a Buffalo supermarket pleaded with the nation Thursday to confront and stop racist violence, their agony pouring out in the tears of a 12-year-old child, hours after the white man accused in the killings silently faced a murder indictment in court.

Jaques “Jake” Patterson, who lost his father, covered his face with his hands as his mother spoke at a news conference. Once she finished, Jake collapsed into the arms of the Rev. Al Sharpton, the veteran civil rights activist, and cried silently, using his T-shirt to wipe his tears.

“His heart is broken,” said his mother, Tirzah Patterson, adding that her son was having trouble sleeping and eating.

“As a mother, what am I supposed to do to help him get through this?” she said.

Her ex-husband, Heyward Patterson, a 67-year-old church deacon, was gunned down Saturday at Tops Friendly Market. So was Robin Harris’s 86-year-old mother and best friend, Ruth Whitfield, on a day when they were supposed to go see the touring Broadway show Ain’t Too Proud.

“That racist young man took my mother away,” Harris said, trembling and stomping her feet as she spoke.

“How dare you!” Harris shouted.

“I need this violence to stop,” she added. “We need to fix this, and we need to fix it now.”

Earlier in the day in another part of town, Payton Gendron, 18, appeared briefly in court to hear that he was indicted in the killings.

“Payton, you’re a coward!” someone shouted the courtroom gallery as he was led away.

Gendron, whose lawyer entered a not guilty plea for him at an earlier court appearance, didn’t speak. His attorneys later declined to comment. He is being held without bail and is due back in court June 9.

Authorities are investigating the possibility of hate crime and terrorism charges against Gendron, who apparently detailed his plans for the assault and his racist motivation in hundreds of pages of writings he posted online shortly before the shooting. It was livestreamed from a helmet-mounted camera.

“We need to hold all that have aided and abetted the hate in this country accountable,” Sharpton said at the news conference outside Buffalo’s Antioch Baptist Church. The civil rights activist’s group, the National Action Network, plans to cover funeral expenses for those killed.

The carnage at the Tops supermarket was unsettling even in a nation that has become almost numb to mass shootings. Thirteen people were shot in total, all but two of them Black. Gendron’s online writings said he planned the assault after becoming infatuated with white supremacist ideology he encountered online.

“I constantly think about what could have been done,” Mark Talley said at the families’ news conference, holding a photo of his slain mother, Geraldine Talley, 62. Her fiancé, who survived the shooting, saw her get shot to death, her son said.

Inaction on the threat of white supremacist violence, Talley said, led to last weekend’s bloodshed.

“It’s like Groundhog Day. We’ve seen this over and over again,” he said.

Stephen Belongia, the FBI’s lead agent in Buffalo, said at a news briefing that agents were still working to piece together Gendron’s motives and how he came to his extremist views. Investigators have been examining the online documents, which included a private diary on the chat platform Discord.

The diary said Gendron planned his attack in secret, with no outside help. A half-hour before opening fire, he invited a small group of people to see his writings, Discord said.

Fifteen Discord users accepted, according to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to speak about it publicly.

It wasn’t clear how quickly those people saw what he’d written or whether any tried to alert law enforcement.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has authorized the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, to investigate whether social media companies that Gendron used were liable for “providing a platform to plan and promote violence.”

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said Thursday that social media users can also play a role by speaking up when they see people posting violent or threatening content.

“You need to out these people,” he said at a briefing. “Expose those that are putting out those types of extreme views, and let us root them out.”

At the families’ news conference, Tirzah Patterson had another request.

“I need the village to help me raise and be here for my son,” she said, asking people to pray “that God gives us strength to go through this.”

“We are the village,” civil rights attorney Ben Crump chanted, encouraging the other victims’ family members to join in. 
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Thousands of ballots with blurry barcodes that can’t be read by vote-counting machines will delay results by weeks in a key U.S. House race in Oregon’s primary election, a shocking development that is giving a black eye to a vote-by-mail pioneer state with a national reputation as a leader on voter access and equity. 

The fiasco affects up to 60,000 ballots, or two-thirds of the roughly 90,000 returned so far in Oregon’s third-largest county. Hundreds of ballots were still coming in under a new law that allows them to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, and 200 Clackamas County employees were getting a crash course Thursday in vote-counting after being redeployed to address the crisis. 

Elections workers must pull the faulty ballots from batches of 125, transfer the voter’s intent to a fresh ballot, then double-check their entries — a painstaking process that could draw the election out until June 13, when Oregon certifies its vote. The workers operate in pairs, one Democrat and one Republican, in two shifts of 11 hours a day. 

Voters from both political parties milled about in a narrow room with windows that allowed views of workers opening ballots, transferring votes, reviewing flagged ballots and using the vote-counting machines. They expressed shock at the error and anger at the slow reaction by Elections Clerk Sherry Hall, who has held the elected post for nearly 20 years. By Wednesday night, workers had counted 15,649. 

“It blows my mind,” said Ron Smith, a Clackamas County voter. “It’s a little bit questionable. That’s why I’m here. … With all that’s going on, we don’t need extra suspicion. It seems like something like that would have been tested correctly at the beginning of this whole entire process.” 

The debacle has stunned Oregon, where all ballots have been cast only by mail for 23 years and lawmakers have consistently pushed to expand voter access through automatic voter registration, expanded deadlines and other measures. It’s also thrown into question a key U.S. House race in a redrawn district that includes a large portion of Clackamas County, which stretches nearly 5,180 square kilometers, from Portland’s liberal southern suburbs to rural conservative communities on the flanks of Mount Hood. 

Key race

In the Democratic primary for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, seven-term Representative Kurt Schrader, a moderate, was trailing in the vote behind progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner. The outcome could have an outsized impact in November, with the possibility that voters could flip the seat for the GOP. 

Hall said the problem came to light May 3, when workers put the first ballots returned through the vote-counting machine. About 70 or 80 ballots from each batch of 125 were spat out as unreadable because their barcodes were more faint and slightly blurred. It was too late to print and mail new ballots, she said. 

Hall said that as Election Day approached and ballots stacked up, she allowed elections workers to take the weekend off because just three people signed up to work Saturday or Sunday.  

“We have people mostly between the ages of 70 and 85” and they need rest, she said.

The secretary of state’s office said Hall declined help, saying Clackamas County could handle the situation. Hall told The Associated Press several county workers were assigned to the ballot problem May 11, a week after it surfaced. 

Kathy Selvaggio, who lives in the county’s more urban and affluent suburbs, peered through the windows Thursday to watch the vote tally. 

“Mail-in voting works, it works well here, but it does undermine my faith in [Hall],” said Selvaggio, who was there as a volunteer for the McLeod-Skinner campaign. 

Hall said her department has discussed running test ballots from the printer before they were mailed out, but that her office had used the printer in question for 10 years with no issues. 

“There’s lots of other tasks to do,” Hall, who is up for reelection in November, told AP. “I hate the fact that this happened with our ballots. It’s horrible. We need to be building trust with voters and this is not a trustworthy piece, but we are doing what we can.” 

It’s not the first time Hall has come under fire in her elections role. In 2012, a temporary election worker was sentenced to 90 days in jail after admitting she tampered with two ballots. In 2014, Hall was criticized for using the phrase “Democrat Party” — a pejorative used by Republicans to demean Democrats — on a primary ballot instead of Democratic Party. 

‘Unacceptable’

Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan said she was “deeply concerned” by the most recent situation and her office issued a statement Tuesday calling the delay “unacceptable.” But state elections officials said Thursday that they had little authority over local county elections officials. 

State law does not require county elections officials to run proof ballots through their machines before mailing them. Christopher Stout, an associate professor of political science at Oregon State University, said he wouldn’t be surprised to see legislation to change that. 

“I think all of these problems, of course, are bad in the short term,” he said. “But in the long term, they’ll lead to improvements, because people will see that those things are problems and they’ll find ways to make it better.”
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President Joe Biden on Thursday enthusiastically welcomed bids by Finland and Sweden to join NATO – expanding the security alliance to include two of Europe’s most modern militaries right on Russia’s northwest border. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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Oklahoma’s Legislature gave final approval Thursday to another Texas-style anti-abortion bill that providers say will be the most restrictive in the nation once the governor signs it.

The bill is part of an aggressive push in Republican-governed states across the country to scale back abortion rights. It comes on the heels of a leaked draft opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court that suggests justices are considering weakening or overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nearly 50 years ago.

The bill by Republican Rep. Wendi Stearman would prohibit all abortions, except to save the life of a pregnant woman or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest that has been reported to law enforcement.

“Is our goal to defend the right to life or isn’t it?” Stearman asked her colleagues before the bill passed on a 73-16 vote mostly along party lines.

The bill is one of at least three anti-abortion bills sent this year to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has indicated he’ll sign it. Another Texas-style abortion bill that prohibits the procedure after cardiac activity can be detected in the embryo, which experts say is about six weeks, has taken effect and has dramatically curtailed the practice in Oklahoma. Another bill set to take effect this summer would make it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. That bill contains no exceptions for rape or incest.

“At this point, we are preparing for the most restrictive environment politicians can create: a complete ban on abortion with likely no exceptions,” said Emily Wales, interim president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which stopped providing abortions at two of its Oklahoma clinics after the six-week ban took effect earlier this month.

Like the Texas law, the Oklahoma bill would allow private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion.

There are legal challenges pending in Oklahoma to both the bill to criminalize abortion and the six-week Texas ban, but the courts have so far failed to stop either measure.
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