Laila Ali
Did you have a common cold and everyone asked your question: Do you have corona? Perhaps the question bore some irony, and I felt a little bullying from close people, so what about the lives of people living with HIV and their families?
Now that the virus has entered its fourth month, more than 4,000 people have died, and 110,000 infected with the virus have crossed the 110,000 barrier in more than 100 countries, this question no longer bears a kind of ridicule, but rather has become very serious, and everyone looks around them suspiciously, and everyone may be a source The next and deadly infection.
Lost humanity
Once the corona case is announced, everyone rushes to dehumanize the situation and turn it into a source of certain danger, so the full name, family details, number of children and the names of their schools are circulated, and the family along it becomes prohibited.
It does not stop there, but Corona bullying extends and takes its worst forms when combined with racism and ignorance, so that an entire people or features of faces becomes a potential source of disease, as it is avoided and ridiculed.
A video posted by activists on social networks yesterday, Monday, showed an incident of bullying of an Asian person.
The video circulating shows this person inside a taxi, where he sits in the back seat, while the driver places a handkerchief on his mouth and nose as a kind of mockery, when others talk to him in nearby cars during traffic congestion, asking him to drop the Asian person down the road for fear of corona infection. The driver has already done so, to show the Asian person - who later turned out to be a Korean - with panic in the crowded road, and everyone is pointing at him and shouting "Corona".
The video circulating on the communication sites afflicted many people with a state of shock and anger, and the activists attributed the reason for this behavior to ignorance, lack of respect for laws, and racism, stressing that the world has become divided into two parts, one on the street without humanity, and the other hypothetical and peaceful and conscious.
In London, Singaporean student Jonathan Mook was attacked brutally last week while walking on Oxford Street. He posted pictures of his beaten face on Facebook, saying in his post, "Racists are constantly finding excuses for practicing their hatred, and at the present time, the Corona virus is the common excuse."
In New Zealand, when the first cases of the Coronavirus were announced, the practice of abuse and bullying of the infected family through social media was very poor, prompting the Auckland Public Health Service to issue a statement calling on people to stop these shameful behaviors.
"As a public health service, we are concerned that such attacks will lead people to hide Covid-19 disease and not to seek medical attention," the statement said.
Racism in schools
Writer Fiona Simpson says in an article entitled "The Corona Virus ... Educating Children to Stop Bullying", that many children's organizations have warned of the spread of racial discrimination among schoolchildren, saying it is vital for schools to explain the facts surrounding the spread of the Corona virus to pupils and explain that the outbreak of the disease Racial discrimination is not justified. "
According to the Children's Young People Now website, Lauren Siger Smith, CEO of the Kids Scape Foundation for Anti-Bullying in London, warned of fear that children will be themselves and their loved ones because of "corona bullying".
"For some children, especially young children, this fear may appear in ignorant and inappropriate comments about other children ... there may also be children and adults who use them as an excuse to bully others and make racist remarks, so it is necessary that schools pre-empt the spread of the phenomenon and provide facts," Smith added. As we know it to children and young adults, make it clear that unhelpful comments and racist behavior will not be tolerated. ”
The worst of people
In an article titled "Corona Virus Brings The Worst Out of People," Mark Longley wrote on New Zealand's NewsHub, "It may not take long until the fine literature of many people disappears, when there are features of a potential threat to humanity, here it appears The dark side of our inner selves. "
"Corona virus, which is spreading rapidly all over the world, has infected more than just the victims. It has become clear that influenza-like symptoms and self-isolation are not the only results of the virus, because it can turn you into a bully and a racist," he added.
"You only need to use Google to search for corona's relationship to incidents of racism or hate crimes, to find stories from all over the world about people who are under attack because they appear to be Chinese or Iranian or from any other place where the virus has spread," he added.
"Some of the attacks are really annoying," Longley notes in his article. "Young people were beaten for no other reason than their race ... This is humanity at its worst when it gets rid of the anger and frustration that fear of the virus causes by bullying a smaller and weaker person."