New online form available in 30 languages lets Asian elders anonymously report hate crimes

A national advocacy group has created a new website to anonymously report

About the form: The National Asian Pacific Center on Aging (NAPCA) launched an online form with three questions asking about the victim’s identity, details about the incident and the person submitting the report’s relation to the victim.

The goal of the form is to accurately collect disaggregated data of violence against AAPI elders to send to policymakers and community leaders and to assist in legislation framing.
NAPCA’s former president Joon Bang stated that disaggregated data was what was missing from current reports because “what affects the Chinese community might be different from the Vietnamese community, or the Cambodian community,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
The form is available in 30 different languages and the group has a live helpline to provide further assistance, information and resources if needed.
The helpline is available Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST. Operators who speak in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean or Spanish are available.

Protect our elders: Bang said that a large number of anti-Asian attacks go unreported and that it’s especially difficult for elders to report a crime due to language and cultural barriers. They are also less likely to speak out because of fear of possible retaliation.

“When you listen to our older adults, they come from a place of humility, so they’ll often say: ‘I don’t want you to spend the time or be concerned about what’s happening to me,'” Bang said.
In March, NAPCA and its community partners launched a nationwide survey that saw three out of five AAPI adults saying they’ve experienced some form of discrimination.
In August, national coalition Stop AAPI Hate reported an increase in the trend of physical attacks across its 9,081 recorded incidents since March 2020. Its report noted that only 7.2% of its reports were from elders in 2021 and that it was even less in 2020 with just 6.5%.
Non-profit group Asian Americans Advancing Justice — L.A. released a PSA narrated by actor and doctor Ken Jeong in May listing five ways for witnesses to racial attacks to safely intervene and prevent verbal harassment from escalating. Its “5Ds of bystander intervention” are Distract, Delegate, Delay, Direct and Document.

Featured Image via Jason Leung

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