Hate Crime Bill Signed in the US

Hate crime bill is important in America a country where its citizen comes from a multi-cultural, races, ethnicities, sexual orientation and religious background. A law is needed to handle that potentially inhospitable environment.

Although a ethnic-based conflict took place a few times in Indonesia, like anti-Chinese riot, Ambon and Poso Muslim-Christian strife, etc I don’t think such law is really need to be set up here. If you walk on the streets in Java or other islands, you’d rarely find such ethnic-based hate-crime.

What Indonesia needs the most is a stern law on corruption. I strongly support a capital punishment or death penalty for any government officials who nowadays regard a corruption act as a sort of achievement. Corruption is the mother of all crimes in Indonesia. The sooner such law is set-up, the better. What do you think?

President Obama signed major civil rights legislation on Wednesday, making it a federal hate crime to assault people based on sexual orientation, gender and gender identity. The new measure expands the the scope of a 1968 law that applies to people attacked because of their race, religion or national origin. The U.S. Justice Department will have expanded authority to prosecute such crimes when local authorities don’t.

The provision, called the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is attached to a defense authorization bill. It is named after Matthew Shepard, a gay college student tortured and killed in 1998, and James Byrd Jr., a black man who was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his death the same year.