Hate Asian-American crimes are rampant, and the "human rights defender" in the United States collapses
【International observation】
Asian-Americans are currently facing a grim reality: Although President Biden officially signed the Anti-Coronavirus Hate Crime Act shortly after taking office in 2021, it aims to combat frequent hate crimes against Asians in the United States since the outbreak of the epidemic. However, with the rapid spread of the epidemic across the United States, the hate crimes encountered by Asian Americans have not decreased, and the racial hatred and institutional problems that led to the attacks have not been substantively resolved, and the number of hate crimes against Asian Americans has increased.
From March 2020 to the end of 2021, there were 10,905 hate crimes against Asian Americans, according to a newly released report by the U.S. Asia-Pacific Policy and Planning Council and Chinese Affirmative Action.
Research by the Center for Hate and Extremism Studies at California State University, San Bernardino, also found that hate crimes against Asian Americans jumped 339 percent in 2021.
These heavy numbers show that rampant anti-Asian hate crimes are deeply rooted in the history, culture and system of racial discrimination in the United States, and the political manipulation of the epidemic by American politicians has become the fuel for anti-Asian hate crimes. The so-called "human rights defender", which has always been self-proclaimed, has completely collapsed.
In recent years, the United States has been dealing with internal and external diseases, obsessed with competition among major powers, and has failed to respond to the domestic new crown pneumonia epidemic. At present, the cumulative number of new crown deaths has exceeded 1 million.
Against this background, the so-called "melting pot" of the United States has become increasingly divided in society, and discrimination against Asian-Americans has intensified.
According to the ABC report on May 6, the 2022 National Asian American Society Tracker Index recently released by the non-profit organization "Leading Asian American Unity for Change" shows that 21% of American adults say "Asian American People are at least partly responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic,” which is 11% in 2021.
Survey data shows that Americans are more likely than ever to question Asian-Americans, including those born in the U.S., who believe they are more loyal to their country of origin, increasing from 20% to 33% in 2021 .
In fact, being regarded as a "forever foreigner" is a painful experience shared by many Asian-Americans; and under the combined effect of xenophobia and anti-communist and anti-Chinese ideology, the current situation of Chinese scientists in the United States is almost like McCarthy returning to the 20th century. era.
Anti-Asian hate crimes have been significantly affected by political polarization in the United States. During the epidemic, American politicians abused derogatory language against Asians, which further fueled the anti-Asian hate crimes.
A joint study by Perrig, director of security studies and professor of criminology and judicial studies at UMass Lowell, and the Development Services Group found that most incidents of anti-Asian violence, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, were It happened in blue state cities and suburbs where voters support Democrats.
A compilation of hate crime data released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino shows a surge in reported anti-Asian hate crimes in 2021, significantly higher than in 2020, with a year-over-year increase of 124%, with New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities have seen record numbers of anti-Asian hate crimes.
In 2021 alone, Los Angeles "has set the record for the most hate crimes of any U.S. city this century," a massive 173 percent increase from 2020; 343%; San Francisco jumped 567% from 9 to 60, half of which were committed by a white man targeting Chinese businesses in just 5 months before his August 2021 arrest.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, almost 60 percent of attacks against Asian Americans occurred in these areas.
About 60 percent of attacks on Asians were physical attacks, and about a third were damage to property.
A study by the US non-profit Asia Pacific Policy and Planning Council and the Chinese Affirmative Action Group found that many US politicians, including President Trump, falsely called the new crown virus "Chinese virus", "Kung Fu flu", etc. Such racist remarks Incites anti-Asian violence in American society.
Some white attackers displayed vicious hostility toward China and parroted the term "Chinese virus."
In June 2020, an Asian restaurant in New Jersey was vandalized, and the perpetrator wrote "coronavirus."
Of the 832 incidents reported in California, many involved anti-Asian slurs and references to China and the coronavirus.
Research by Professor Perrigger and collaborators shows that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans are more frequently targeted by white extremists for violence.
Almost half of the attacks against Asian Americans in 2020 and 2021 were motivated by anger and hostility toward Asian Americans caused by the pandemic.
According to the study, violent attacks against Asian Americans or their property averaged only 8.1 per year in the U.S. in the 30 years prior to the outbreak, but in 2020 and 2021 there were 163, an average of 81.5 per year, This is 11 times more than before.
The Asia Pacific Policy and Planning Council and the Chinese Affirmative Action Organization launched a hate incident reporting website on March 19, 2021. From March to June of that year, more than 2,100 anti-Asian-American hate incidents related to the epidemic were received in the United States Reports, including physical assault, verbal assault, workplace discrimination and online harassment.
The CNN report pointed out that due to the spread of misinformation linking the new crown virus with Asian countries or people, American society's satire and stereotypes against Asian Americans have reached a historical climax.
A "racist crisis" has left thousands of Asian-American families in constant fear across the United States.
Anti-Asian hate crimes are also highlighted by a surge in cases of sexual harassment or assault against Asian-American women.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the dehumanization, materialization and alienation of Asian American women have surged. They are more likely to experience violence and systematic abuse in the health care system, and are more likely to be pushed, beaten, and tortured in public places. Kicked, slapped in the face, insulted.
Women make up 68 percent of victims of hate crimes against Asian Americans, and women report nearly twice as many incidents of discrimination and harassment as men, according to recently released data from Stop Hating Asian Americans.
Yonkers, New York, police announced on March 14 that an Asian woman was attacked by a man, beaten more than 125 times in the head and face, stomped on her feet seven times, and verbally abused.
Attacks on Asian-American women, in almost every form of hate crime, have not received enough attention in American society.
In March 2021, there was a massive shooting against Asian women in Atlanta, and six Asian women were shot and killed by white murderers.
The bloodshed highlights the current security risks facing Asian American communities, especially Asian women.
President Biden recently issued a statement acknowledging that the mass shooting forced Americans to "face up to long-standing anti-Asian sentiment and gender-based violence."
It is worth noting that the structural flaws in the American judicial system have led to an increasing number of double standards in the judicial system for hate crimes against Asians, making Asians more anxious about their current and future situations.
According to a survey by the American Institute for Public Religion, 51 percent of Americans believe that minorities in the United States are treated unequally compared to whites in the criminal justice system.
The U.S. legal system is structured to favor the rich and powerful, and some rampant anti-Asian attacks or murders are not considered hate crimes.
For example, An Lai, a 69-year-old Vietnamese-American, was walking in Chinatown in November 2019 when a white father and son brutally attacked him with a baseball bat and threatened to kill him.
But the district attorney refused to charge the murderer with a hate crime and did not notify Allay of a leniency plea deal with the attacker until before the sentencing, and the murderer received a light sentence.
Alley criticized the DA's systematic refusal to uphold the rights of Asian-Americans subjected to racial violence as "the most brutal, horrific, and humiliating experience of his life."
The incident has left local Asian victims and their families deeply frustrated.
The worrying situation of Asian-Americans is by no means unfounded. It can be traced back to both the negative phenomena of the present and the bleak past of the United States.
For example, in the history of public health crises in the United States, hate crimes against vulnerable groups such as ethnic minorities are not uncommon, and they have been the scapegoats for large-scale infectious disease outbreaks in the United States for more than 100 years.
In the summer of 1849, a local government report in Boston pointed the "source" of the cholera epidemic to newly arrived Irish immigrants; in March 1900, San Francisco health authorities sealed off the entire Chinatown after the first suspected case of bubonic plague was found in Chinatown. In the 1980s, the United States wrongly accused Haitians of bringing HIV to the United States, and American politicians slandered Mexicans and other Latinos in the United States as the "source of the virus". " and the carrier.
It can be seen that although the United States has always claimed that human rights are the core of its values, the chronic diseases of racial discrimination and xenophobia in the United States have never been alleviated, which fully highlights the endogenous and structural human rights dilemma in the United States.
If the United States does not carry out political and cultural reforms, it will not be able to change its vicious circle of race relations and racial discrimination, and it will be impossible to protect the human rights of ethnic minorities, especially Asian Americans, let alone eliminate the targeting of Asian Americans. Hate crime is high and vicious hate crime is a chronic disease that occurs from time to time.
(Author: Ni Jianping, Professor of the School of Marxism, Dalian University of Technology, Director of the Northeast Asia International Development and Cooperation Research Center of Dalian University of Technology)