Thousands of people demonstrated in several American cities to denounce racism after a series of murders targeting people of Asian origin in massage salons, which are suspected of being committed against the background of their accusations of spreading the Corona virus.
In the city of Atlanta, Georgia, which witnessed the killings in massage parlors, a new demonstration took place Sunday evening, in which hundreds participated, denouncing the racism faced by people of Asian descent, and the escalation of violent crimes against them, coinciding with the outbreak of the Corona virus.
In addition to Atlanta, other demonstrations took place in New York and Washington, where the participants carried banners calling for an end to racist attacks on people of Asian descent.
Hundreds of people demonstrated on Sunday in Montreal, Canada, as part of a march called by the "Group of Chinese Progressives in Quebec".
And last Tuesday, 6 women of Asian descent were killed in a shooting in 3 massage salons in Atlanta and the nearby city of Woodstock, after some right-wingers incited Asians there and accused them of responsibility for the Corona virus, according to American reports.
Police have arrested the shooter, a young man named Robert Aaron Long (21 years old), and he has been charged with murder and attempted murder.
During his interrogation, Long denied that he carried out the racially motivated killings, and claimed that he did so because he was "a sex freak".
While the director of the FBI, Chris Ray, ruled out that the attacks that took place in Atlanta were motivated by hate, lawmakers and activists suggested that racism was behind these crimes.
Atlanta city police are still investigating the motive behind the attack on the massage parlors, and the FBI is involved in investigations.
The attacks in Atlanta raised concerns among Asian Americans who have reported an increase in hate crimes since March 2020, when former US President Donald Trump began referring to the Corona epidemic as the "Chinese virus."
One of the massage parlors that witnessed a shooting in Atlanta (Reuters)
Denounce violence
On Friday, US President Joe Biden denounced in Atlanta the high rate of violence against the Asian community in the United States.
Biden called on citizens to take action to prevent race-related violence, and said in a speech at Emory University that "silence is complicity. We cannot be complicit," calling on Americans to fight what he called "the resurgence of xenophobia."
For his part, the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, criticized former President Donald Trump for condoning intolerance against people of Asian descent and not condemning him.
Schumer stressed, in a press conference in New York on Sunday, the need to end violence against Asians, noting that this is not related to this group, but to the entire American community.
In the context, US Senator Tammy Duckworth, on Sunday, expressed doubts about the initial assessment of the Director of the FBI, which ruled out that the shootings in Atlanta were motivated by hatred.
In statements to CBS, Duckworth called for a deeper investigation to determine whether the shootings and other similar crimes had race-related motives.
Anti-racism activists and Democrats accuse Trump of encouraging this phenomenon, describing the Corona virus as a "Chinese virus" or as a "Chinese plague."