Private Chen’s Family Learns More About Hazing by Fellow G.I.’s
The officers in command of the battalion of Pvt. Danny Chen, who the Army says committed suicide in Afghanistan in October after being
hazed by fellow soldiers, were aware of the harsh treatment he had repeatedly received, his family said Thursday.
The family had already been told by investigators that other soldiers had taunted Private Chen with racial epithets and forced him to crawl on the ground while they pelted him with rocks. But this week, new details of his treatment were disclosed to the family.
At a news conference, family members and their supporters said Private Chen had been mistreated virtually every day of his six-week stint in Afghanistan. They said he had been called a “gook,” a “chink” and “dragon lady.” He was also forced to wear a green helmet and shout orders in Chinese, to a battalion that had no other Chinese-American soldiers, they said.
Previously, the family “had no idea of the extent or how long this mistreatment had been going on,” said Elizabeth R. OuYang, president of the New York chapter of OCA, a civil rights group. Ms. OuYang, who is a lawyer, declined to comment further about ranking officers’ knowledge of the harassment of Private Chen.
The family learned of the new details - which they said were in the fullest account yet of what happened to their son - in a three-hour briefing on Wednesday with Army officials, including Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick and Col. Thomas P. Weikert, at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn.
In an indication of the prominence of Private Chen’s case, several officials, including City Comptroller John C. Liu and City Councilwoman Margaret S. Chin, attended the news conference. The case has generated considerable interest in New York’s Asian neighborhoods because Private Chen was a Chinatown native and because of some Asian-Americans’ ambivalence toward the United States military.
Private Chen, 19, was found dead in a guard tower, of what a military statement called “an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound” to the head. The Army has charged eight members of Private Chen’s battalion, including one officer, in connection with the death. The most serious charges are manslaughter and negligent homicide.
In a statement, George B. Wright, an Army spokesman, noted that there had been “regulations and policies against hazing and bullying for some time.”
He added: “The Army is a values-based organization. We inculcate our soldiers with the need to treat all with dignity and respect. We enforce standards, and when our soldiers fail to meet those standards, we take appropriate action.”
There have been two investigations into Private Chen’s death: one conducted by the regional command, which resulted in the charges and produced the findings reported to the family on Wednesday, and one by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, which is expected to be completed in February.
In a statement, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a New York Democrat who is a member of the Armed Services Committee, said that “those responsible for abuse must be held accountable” and that there should be “a full review of all abuse cases across the military.”
At the news conference, Private Chen’s family repeated entreaties that any trial by court-martial be conducted in the United States, not in Afghanistan, to ensure greater transparency. Private Chen’s parents, teary-eyed, said little during the news conference. But his mother, Su Zhen Chen, said through an interpreter that she thought that “the pain would subside, but it has not.”
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