Youth organizer Tam Nguyen

The Providence Journal Ruben W. Perez

PROVIDENCE — On Dec. 13, a 16-year-old Southeast Asian youth called Governor Carcieri’s decision to cut three Southeast Asian interpreters “racist.” A week later, the governor’s wife, Sue Carcieri, called the youth’s criticism “bad behavior.”

But she went further: in an interview with Journal columnist M. Charles Bakst last month, Sue Carcieri said, “First of all, I think they have mentors who are much older than them who are training them up. You know — how those terrorists have kids blow up, you know, Benazir Bhutto and so forth? You think the kids thought of it? I don’t think so.”

Those comments have incensed Southeast Asian teenagers, many of whom are members of a group called Providence Youth Student Movement, a student advocacy organization. Yesterday, they held a news conference on Broad Street in which they demanded an apology from Sue Carcieri, asked both the governor and his wife to meet with them and urged the governor to reinstate the interpreters.

In November, the governor announced that he was cutting the three interpreters as part of a much larger effort to trim the state’s budget deficit — projected at between $384 million and $450 million next year.

At the news conference, Tam Nguyen said that he was the 16-year-old boy who had “the courage to stand up for my community.”

“When Mrs. Carcieri compared me to a suicide bomber and my mentor to a terrorist leader, I was mad and disappointed,” he said. “I am not a bad kid. I am just trying to be an advocate for my community.”

Yesterday, in a prepared statement, Sue Carcieri said she does not intend to apologize, nor do the Carcieris intend to meet with the youth group.

“However, Governor Carcieri believes this group should apologize for calling him a racist,” the statement says. “That is a grave charge that should not be levied (sic) in an effort to score political points or attract media attention.”

According to Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal, Sue Carcieri never meant to draw any connection between the people who object to the governor’s plan to reduce the size of the state work force and the individuals responsible for the death of Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister who was assassinated in December.

“Instead, Mrs. Carcieri was objecting to the tendency among certain groups to accuse the governor, either overtly or by implication, of racism or bigotry,” the statement says. “Governor and Mrs. Carcieri believe that people can have serious differences of opinion on important policy issues without using those types of insults.”

But 16-year-old Pirom Ting said that taking away interpreters will eliminate the only direct link between Southeast Asian parents and essential state services. Students also said that this cut will force them to skip school in order to interpret for their parents.

“It was stated that allowing us to meet with the governor himself would be rewarding bad behavior,” Ting said. “Is it bad behavior to speak our minds and express our emotions on things that directly impact us? Is it wrong to care about what is happening in our community? I don’t see it as a reward to meet with the governor. I see it as our right.”

Meanwhile, Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, added his voice to yesterday’s protest by Southeast Asian youth. In December, the ACLU filed a complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights in Boston, charging that the state Department of Human Services had violated federal law and failed to comply with a 1997 consent agreement, which required that the DHS provide appropriate interpreter services to clients with limited English language proficiency.

lborg@projo.com