Since the beginning of COVID-19, several cases of Anti-Asian Hate crimes have increased at an all-time high

By: Samantha Bravo

Protesters in Los-Angeles are rallying to stop Anti-Asian violence. Credit: cnn.com

Since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, the Asian community, and the Pacific Islander (AAPI) community have been subjected to numerous hate crimes.

All of this occurred when former President Donald Trump exploited our fears and said that the virus was caused by Asian people. He went as far as to refer to the pandemic as the “China Virus” and “Kung Flu”.

Studies have shown that over 3,800 hate crimes against Asian Americans have been reported in the last year.

68% of those incidents have been accounted for shunning and verbal harassment while 11% have been accounted for physical violence. Out of all these cases, 68% of the victims were women while 29% of the victims were men.

Asian Americans are also suffering from online harassment as well as being called xenophobic slurs.

“Too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worry, waking up each morning this past year of fearing for their safety, the safety of their loved ones,” said President Joe Biden.

Recently, there was a mass shooting at three different spas in Atlanta caused by 21-year-old Aaron Long.

As of now, he has been arrested and charged with the murder of eight victims, six of them being Asian American women.

The names of some of these victims include 33-year-old Delania Ashley Yaun, 54-year-old Paul Andre Michels, 44-year-old Daoyou Feng, and 49-year-old Xiaojie Tan.

Long is a self-proclaimed sex addict who had told the police that the reason why he carried out these shootings was to eliminate his “temptation”.

“Whatever the motivation was for this guy, we know that the majority of the victims were Asian,” said Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta. “We also know that this is an issue that is happening across the country.”

Unfortunately, it does not end there. Weeks after the shootings in Atlanta, other Asian Americans have either been physically assaulted or received threats.

On Monday, March 29th, there was another incident where a 65-year-old Asian woman in America was brutally attacked in Midtown Manhattan. According to the NYPD Hate Crime Taskforce, the attacker “was arrested and charged with Felony Assault as a Hate Crime”.

In San Francisco, there was another incident where an 84-year-old man from Thailand was slammed to the ground. He died two days later when he was taken to the hospital.

As the hate crimes continue, several rallies have been made, calling for an end to Anti-Asian violence. Other than Atlanta, the rallies are in several cities including New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Seattle, Chicago, Milwaukee, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Honolulu.

A Vietnamese nail salon owner named Tam Nguyen who also happens to be one of several demonstrators in Los Angeles had received a racist letter. He said that the note was sent to three different Vietnamese-owned nail salons in California last week.

The letter included several racist slurs and stereotypes that ended with the phrase “go home”.

Not surprisingly, several protesters are being attacked for going out on the streets to voice their anger.

In Union Square, Katie Hou, a Chinese American Woman who works in accounting took her 7-year-old daughter to a rally to teach her about racial injustice in America. They were later approached by a man who asked for one of her signs that read, “Hate has no Peace”.

At first, she thought he was going to protest, but as soon as she gave him the sign, he smashed it to the ground and punched her twice in the face.

“People need to be vigilant about their safety,” said Hou. “But at the same time, we need to do something to stop this from happening again.”