Tuesday, January 18, 2011

DOJ Forms Group To Fight Post-9/11 Discriminatory Backlash


Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez has directed the U. S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division National Origin Working Group to work to combat violations of civil rights laws against Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South-Asian Americans, and those thought or treated as members of these, by starting the Initiative to Combat Post-9/11 Discriminatory Backlash. Among a lot of tools and information the site has copies in various languages of the Civil Rights Division brochure "Federal Protections Against National Origin Discrimination" which provides more information about the laws the Division enforces, namely: Arabic, Cambodian, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Hindi, Korean, Laotian, Punjabi, Russian, Tagalog, Urdu, and Vietnamese. Go to the DOJ page.

Incidentally, for those of us who didn't know before, including me, Tagalog is, according to Wikipedia: "pronounced /təˈɡɑːlɒɡ/ in English, and is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV (Calabarzon and Mimaropa) and of Metro Manila. Its standardized form, commonly called Filipino, is the national language and one of two official languages of the Philippines. It is related to - though not readily intelligible with - other Austronesian languages such as Malay–Indonesian, Javanese, and Hawaiian."