An investigation opened after calls for violence against Asians

A cartoon condemning hate speech in front of Twitter headquarters in Tokyo (illustration).

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"Hitler should have killed the Chinese, not the Jews", "I call on all the renois and rebeus of France to attack every Chinese they meet in the street": these captures of messages, among others, were posted on Wednesday 28 October on the Facebook page of the Association of Young Chinese in France (AJCF).

The association launched the alert, with the Security for All collective, "against what is akin to an incitement to hunt Asians in France".

An investigation was opened by the Paris prosecutor's office, according to

and AFP, for "public provocation to commit an attack on the physical integrity of a person of a racist nature".

The investigations were entrusted to the brigade for the repression of delinquency against the person (BRDP).

The AJCF, which calls for "vigilance", encourages any person "victim or simple witness of reprehensible behavior or words" to "file a complaint and / or report it to an association of (its) collective".

"Taboo"

In the wake of these messages, a collective was created Friday, the “Asian anti-racist collective”, which condemned “any hateful act and speech of a racist nature”.

"Instead of turning us against each other and thus playing into the hands of the fascists, let us remember the distress of our sisters, brothers and adelphs targeted by negrophobia and Islamophobia who face to the impunity of violence ”, writes the collective.

In the background, the fear of an outbreak of intercommunal violence, as explained by Mai Lam Nguyen-Conan, author and speaker on the theme of discrimination.

“What bothers me a lot in these messages is the appeal of 'renois [black] and rebeus [Arab]' against the Chinese.

It's a taboo: when you hear Asian people talking about the assaults they have suffered, they say that it was not white people who committed it.

This is something we agreed never to mention.

Isn't this message meant to create more discord than anything else?

It is a strange mobilization that is waging a gang war.

"

An "excuse", a "pretext"

For the singer Thérèse, who gravitates in the orbit of several of these associations, the evil is not new.

“The violence began after the Beijing Olympics, and increased in 2012 when

featured the

 [the magazine was convicted of defamation].

The clichés of Asians have started to circulate saying they have cash on them.

The rise of the coronavirus served as an additional excuse, because a scapegoat had to be found, as well as the discrimination against the Uighurs: some see this phenomenon as the domination of China over Islam.

But Chinese or Asians from the rest of the world have nothing to do with it!

», Laments the activist.

Spokesman for the Safety for All committee, Sun-Lay Tan is cautious about the real motivations of the attackers.

“I think the motivation is to hit Chinese people.

It is part of a ritual to enter a gang in certain neighborhoods.

I think the aggressors do not have the intellectual capacity to avenge the Uighurs, it is a pretext.

The person who did that wanted to create a bad buzz, because the Chinese are easy targets.

This can create inter-community tensions, but I don't think that is the motivation of the people who made these tweets ”.

Despite these fears, Mai Lam Nguyen-Conan remains optimistic about addressing anti-Asian racism.

“The Asian community is much more organized than it was a few years ago,” she analyzes.

The Collectif Sécurité Pour Tous is also preparing a "practical guide" for filing a complaint, stressing that people of Asian origin have too little access to justice.

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