Many Asian Americans in the United States have been verbally harassed, spat on, and injured for months in a “disgusting pattern of hatred” that coincides with the Covid-19 pandemic. The murders of eight people, most of them Asian, in three spas in the Atlanta area shocked a community already tense on Wednesday, even though police have not yet established a motive.
“We don’t know if this incident is racially motivated, but you need to understand the deep-seated fear our community is experiencing,” said Cynthia Choi, one of the co-founders of Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition promoting violence and intimidation of Asian Americans and islanders in the United States. Pacific.
“At the moment, if there is no evidence, we also cannot rule it out due to the fact that Covid (19) was racialized, the fact that the majority of the victims were Asian women,” added Choi.
The shootings in the Atlanta area have left the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community across the country in mourning and a feeling that it was a devastating escalation in violence that has become increasingly familiar to them.
“I feel like it has just gone to a completely different extreme,” said Hanna Kim, a teacher from Novi, Michigan.
Kim, a 24-year-old Korean American, said she often feels like she has a target on her back. Last year, a parent wanted to remove one of her students from her second grade because Kim was Asian.
“Are people going to say things to me?” Kim said she often wondered herself. “Are people going to avoid me because they think for some reason I’m going to be the one spreading the virus?”
Hours before the shooting, Stop AAPI Hate had released the latest data on the number of first-hand complaints they received. The report was part of an effort to renew their call for concrete action against targeted intolerance and discrimination.
As of March 19 last year, the group has received a total of 3,292 complaints from all 50 states and Washington, DC. At least 503 anti-Asian hate incidents had been reported in the past two months, the group said.
Most of the incidents – about 68% – were verbal harassment cases, while avoidance or avoidance accounted for about 20.5%. According to Stop AAPI Hate, about 11% of the incidents involved physical attacks.
State Representative Sam Park, who was the first Asian-American Democrat to be elected to the Georgia state house in 2016, said there was “palpable fear and anxiety” in the Atlanta area following the shootings.
“Whether motivated by race, it was an attack against Asian American women, against members of our community, and of course we want to do everything we can to protect everyone,” Park told CNN.
Across the Atlanta metro area, the population of Asian-American and Pacific islanders has grown significantly in recent years – a reflection of the trend of the state’s increasing and diversifying population.
The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum said some members in Atlanta were concerned about the safety of their families, including those who work in salons.
“We have been shocked and devastated by the violence in Georgia that claimed eight lives, six of whom were Asian-American women. We mourn the families of these victims. We are shocked and remain concerned for the safety of our community members. all over the world.The country has now escalated violence against Asian Americans, ” Sung Yeon Choimorrow, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
In recent months, lawyers, actors and officials have come together to denounce the violence following a series of attacks in California and New York that seriously injured several people and killed some.
“(K) given the increasing level of hate crimes against our Asian-American brothers and sisters, we also want to express our solidarity with them and recognize that none of us should ever be silent about any hate,” Harris said during a bilateral meeting with Irish officials in commemoration of St. Patrick’s Day.
Last week, President Joe Biden addressed the nation on the one-year anniversary of the closure of Covid-19. During his speech, he condemned the hatred and discrimination that Asian Americans have faced.
CNN’s Nicquel Terry Ellis, Natasha Chen, Priya Krishnakumar and Madeline Holcombe contributed to this report.