A couple weeks ago I posted a brief response to Private Danny Chen’s apparent suicide. Last month, Army officials released a three-hour briefing that revealed more of the harsh and cruel treatment Pvt. Chen received from his fellow soldiers.
…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. (NY Times)
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p>Earlier last year, Lance Corporal Harry Lew, a Santa Clara native, also committed suicide after being hazed by other Marines. Accused of falling asleep during guard duty, other soldiers stomped on Lew’s back and legs, poured contents of a broken sandbag on his face and punched the back of his head “so hard his attacker cut his knuckles,” an NBC article reports.
Marine Jacob Jacoby, responsible for Lew’s hazing, was sentenced to 30 days in the brig and demoted to private, a sentence that seemed far too lenient to many. Rep. Judy Chu of California, Lew’s relative, called the sentence a “slap in the face”.
According to a recent NY Times article, the involuntary manslaughter charges, the harshest of 13 charges facing infantry Specialist Ryan Offutt, may be dropped on the recommendation of an unnamed military investigator. Specialist Offutt, who “was sentenced to jail in 2002 for attacking a woman in his house”, stands to face more than 23 years in jail if convicted of all charges.
