And it’s not just an American problem. From the UK to Australia, reports of hate crimes against the East and Southeast Asia in Western countries have increased as the pandemic has taken hold over the past year. At least 11 people of East and Southeast Asian descent, CNN, spoke of racist and xenophobic incidents, such as people moving in their trains, verbal abuse and even physical assault.
In recent years, some Western politicians have repeatedly stressed China’s commitment to the Covid-19 outbreak, as well as heightened rhetoric against the Asian superpower. In this environment, advocates say that people of East Asian and Southeast Asian heritage have increasingly become a target for racism.
Peng Wang, a lecturer at Southampton University in the south of England, says he was physically assaulted by a group of four men while jogging near his home one cold afternoon.
The men chanted the 37-year-old racial insults, including ‘Chinese virus’, he told CNN. They got out of the car after Wang yelled at them back, punched him in the face and kicked him on the ground. He told CNN he suffered minor facial injuries and a nosebleed, but the trauma of the event worried him to leave his home, his future in the UK and the safety of his young son.
“What they did was not civil, it should not have happened in today’s society. They treated me just like an animal,” he said. Police have since arrested two men, according to two statements sent to CNN.
‘When Donald Trump [US] President, and he said the ‘China virus’ – it was absolutely wrong, “Wang added.
On the edge
As the pandemic swept across Europe, activists in Spain and France began to notice a problem. Campaigns, such as #NoSoyUnVirus (#IAmNotAVirus), were created to raise awareness of the increase in violence against Asians.
In March 2020, an American man of Chinese descent, Thomas Siu, said he was violently assaulted in the Spanish capital, Madrid, after two men shouted at him with racial riots.
Siu, who was a student at the time, said he was verbally assaulted ten times between January and March last year. This time he did not take it anymore, and instead shouted at his verbal abusers.
Susana Ye, a 29-year-old Spanish journalist who made a documentary about the Chinese diaspora in 2019, told CNN that violence against Asians in Spain has been normalized and underreported by the Spanish press.
“For many it is not an important issue, because many journalists do not live [in] or know members of the community, “she said. They do not have an anti-racist perspective and do not know of communities outside their own. ”
She says there is a problem of under-reporting of hate crimes in Spain due to language barriers, the fear among some of being deported, and the tendency for the older generation to remain silent about incidents.
“I think people choose violence, verbal violence and physical violence because they do not expect us to respond at all,” she said. “It’s used to us keeping a low profile.”
Spanish comic book writer Quan Zhou Wu, who lives in Madrid, agrees. “The attack in Atlanta has not yet been on the front pages of the media in Spain, this is great news, we are invisible,” she told CNN.
In France, fighters say the pandemic has made racism even worse for its Asian community. “Since last year, racism has become more open. These are people who say they do not like Asians, or that they do not like China,” said Sun-Lay Tan, a spokesman for Security for All. organization representing more than 40, said. Asian associations in France.
‘Make it better for future generations’
The campaign group estimates that in 2019 there was one hate crime incident against an Asian every two days in the Paris area. Although there are no data for 2020, Tan spoke of a number of anecdotes, including a report from someone who shrugged his shoulders the night after French President Emmanuel Macron announced a new closure in October.
He said his first experience of xenophobia in France was last February when a man with the train changed places after Tan sat down.
“Our parents dealt with racism, but they accepted it because they wanted to integrate into the country,” he told CNN. “We are the second generation of immigrants in France, our responsibility is to speak out” and “make France better for the next generation,” he said.
Berlin filmmaker Popo Fan, born in Jiangsu province in China, said things were bad at the start of the pandemic, when he was too scared to go outside or use public transportation.
“At the beginning of the pandemic I was spit on, I was sworn in on the subway line in Berlin,” Fan said. ‘But I have a complicated feeling about it, because the person who attacked me was a migrant himself. He was drunk and probably from a lower socio-economic background … I feel that German society did not give him enough resources or training on racial diversity and public health. He does not have access to the information. ‘
He says the blame lies with the German authorities, who ‘apparently do not care enough about racial issues’.
He said he had been repeatedly targeted on the streets before the outbreak. “I made one person shout at me,” goes back to China. “The police told me they could not do anything,” Fan said.
Being merged
Back in the UK, Singaporean student Kay Leong told CNN that a person selling roses on the street started screaming her ‘coronavirus, coronavirus’ after she refused to buy flowers.
“I do not come from China, but I would imagine that all Asians get entangled when it comes to this kind of racism,” she told CNN. “I also noticed more. But I will say, this kind of racism or intimidation is not new to me, I have faced it since I came to London in 2016 for my undergraduate studies [studies]. ”
Kate Ng, a 28-year-old Malaysian-Chinese journalist from the British newspaper The Independent, told CNN that although the attacks in the US seemed much more pervasive, the incidents reported in the UK had a chilling effect. distributed among Southeast Asians.
“I want to go alone when there are more people. But I ask myself, ‘Is it more likely that I will be verbally abused or attacked?’ That fear is very tangible, ‘she said.