And it is not just an American problem. From the United Kingdom to Australia, reports of hate crimes against the East and Southeast Asia have increased in Western countries as the pandemic broke out last year. At least 11 people of ancestry from East and Southeast Asia, CNN, spoke about described racist and xenophobic incidents, such as people walking away from them on the train, verbal abuse and even physical assault.
In the past year, some Western politicians have repeatedly emphasized China’s connection to the Covid-19 outbreak, as well as raised rhetoric against the Asian superpower. In this environment, advocates say that people with East Asian and Southeast Asian heritage have increasingly become a target of racism.
Peng Wang, a professor at the University of Southampton in southern England, says he was physically assaulted by a group of four men while running near his home on a cold afternoon.
The men shouted racial slurs against the 37-year-old man, including “Chinese virus”, he told CNN. They got out of the car after Wang yelled at them, punching him in the face and kicking him in the ground. He suffered minor facial injuries and bleeding from his nose, but the trauma of the event made him worry about leaving his home, his future in the UK and the safety of his son, he told CNN.
“What they did was not civil, it should not happen in today’s society. They just treated me like an animal, ”he said. Since then, police have arrested two men on suspicion of racially aggravated assault, according to two statements sent to CNN.
“When Donald Trump was the [US] President, and he said the ‘China virus’ – that was absolutely wrong, “added Wang.
On the periphery
As the pandemic spread across Europe, activists in Spain and France began to notice a problem. Campaigns, such as #NoSoyUnVirus (#IAmNotAVirus), were created to raise awareness about the increase in violence against Asians.
In March 2020, an American of Chinese descent, Thomas Siu, said he was violently beaten in Spain’s capital, Madrid, after two men shouted racial slanders at him about the coronavirus.
Siu, who was a student at the time, said that between January and March last year he was verbally assaulted 10 times. This time, he couldn’t take it anymore and instead shouted at his verbal attackers.
Susana Ye, a 29-year-old Spanish journalist who made a documentary about the country’s Chinese diaspora in 2019, told CNN that violence against Asians in Spain had normalized and was underreported by the Spanish press.
“For many it is not an important issue because many journalists do not live [in] or meet members of the community, “she said.” They do not have an anti-racist perspective and do not know communities other than their own. ”
She says there is a problem of underreporting hate crimes in Spain due to language barriers, fears of being deported and a tendency of the older generation to remain silent about the incidents.
“I think people choose violence, verbal violence and physical violence because they don’t expect us to react,” she said. “They are used to being discreet.”
Spanish comic book writer Quan Zhou Wu, who lives in Madrid, agrees. “The Atlanta attack did not appear on the front pages of the media in Spain, it is super, super secondary news, we are invisible,” she told CNN.
In France, activists say the pandemic has made racism even worse for its Asian community. “Since last year, racism has become more evident. It’s people saying that they don’t like Asians or they don’t like China,” said Sun-Lay Tan, spokesman for Security for All, an organization representing more than 40 Asian associations in France.
‘Do better for future generations’
The campaign group estimates that in 2019, there was a hate crime incident against an Asian every other day in the Paris area alone. Although he has no data for 2020, Tan spoke about a series of anecdotes, including the account of someone who had his shoulder dislocated the night after French President Emmanuel Macron announced a new blockade in October.
He said his first experience of xenophobia in France was last February, when a man switched seats on the subway train 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” and make France “better for the next generation,” he said.
Berlin-based filmmaker Popo Fan, born in the Chinese province of Jiangsu, said things were looking bad at the start of the pandemic, when he was afraid to leave home or use public transport.
“At the beginning of the pandemic that I was spat on, I was sworn in on the Berlin metro line”, Fan said. “But I have a complicated feeling about this, because the person who attacked me was a migrant. He was drunk and probably from a lower socioeconomic background … I feel that German society did not give him enough resources or education about racial diversity. and public health. He doesn’t have access to that information. “
He says it is the fault of the German authorities, who “do not seem to care enough about racial issues”.
He said he was repeatedly shot in the streets even before the outbreak. “I had a person yelling at me” go back to China. “The police told me there was nothing they could do,” said Fan.
Being confused
Back in the UK, Singaporean student Kay Leong told CNN that a person who sold roses on the street started shouting “coronavirus, coronavirus” at her after she refused to buy flowers.
“I’m not from China, but I imagine that all Asians are confused when it comes to this type of racism,” she told CNN. ” I also noticed more malicious looks. 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 to do my graduation [studies]. ”
Kate Ng, a 28-year-old Malaysian-Chinese journalist for the British newspaper The Independent, told CNN that, although the attacks in the United States appear to be much more widespread, the reported incidents in the UK spread a chill among Southeast Asians.
“I want to go out alone when there are more people around. But I ask myself, ‘Is it more likely that I will be verbally assaulted or attacked?’ This fear is very palpable, “she said.