Democrats said on Sunday that last week’s shootings in spas in and around Atlanta, which left eight people dead, six of whom were Asian-American, were hate crimes that demanded federal charges.
“We all know hate when we see it,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., On NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, adding, “It is tragic that we have been visited for this type of violence again.”
The shootings increased fear and anger in Asian American communities at a time when anti-Asian American hate incidents increased during the coronavirus pandemic. Democrats, local officials and community advocates have lobbied law enforcement agencies to characterize the deaths as a hate crime, saying that race cannot be ignored as a motive.
Speaking in Atlanta last week, President Joe Biden said many Asian Americans had been “attacked, accused, scapegoated and harassed” in recent months, adding, “Silence is complicity”.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, a white man, was charged with eight counts of murder and murder and one count of aggravated assault. Authorities claimed he said the attacks were not racially motivated because, he said, he told investigators that he was “sex addicted” and saw the spas as “a temptation he wanted to eliminate”.
Investigators have yet to find concrete evidence that would be sufficient to build a federal hate crime case against Long, several police officers said.
“My heart breaks for the eight victims and, as I read more about them, I see that they were workers, many were mothers, one was 74 years old and, yes, I strongly believe that this is a hate crime,” said Congresswoman Judy Chu , D-Calif., On ABC’s “This Week” program. “This is a 21-year-old white man who chose a business called ‘Young’s Asian Massage’ as his first victim, so he drove 43 kilometers to another location where he visited two more Asian spas.
“If his only problem was his addiction to sex, then he could have chosen those 27 kilometers from anywhere he could have gone,” she said. “But no, he went specifically to those Asian spas where it became clear that in all three places there would be many Asian women and, in fact, these were the majority of those who were shot and killed.”
Chu said he knows that there is a “high” legal barrier to hate crime charges.
“But I would say, look, these were places where people spoke another language – they may not have heard you,” she said. “They may be dead. But in my mind and in the minds of many, this is an anti-Asian hate crime.”
In his interview, Warnock said the incident is a reason to renew efforts to pass gun reforms across the country.
“This sniper was able to kill all these people on the same day he bought a firearm,” he said. “But now, what is our legislature doing? They are busy under the Gold Dome here in Georgia trying to prevent people from voting on the same day they register.
“I think that suggests a distortion of values where you can buy a gun and create so much carnage and violence on the same day, but if you want to exercise your right to vote as an American citizen, the same Legislature that you should focus on is raising barriers to that constitutional right, “he said.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in “This Week” that his agency is “very focused on increasing hate crimes against Asian Americans, the Pacific Island community and many other groups”.
“We are very focused on the extremism of domestic violence,” he said. “It is the biggest terrorist-related threat we face in our homeland.”
