Volume 2, Issue No. 59
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . .
Our latest as of Monday, March 29, 2021
~ Asian communities in Canada and the United States have become targets of hate crimes which spiked as the coronavirus took a deadly toll starting last year and broadened into a pandemic. A Toronto-based group monitoring the developments said 1,150 cases of racist attacks from across Canada have been recorded from the period March 10, 2020, to February 28, 2021. Of that number, the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia accounted for 40% and 44%, respectively. The situation has worsened with the mass shooting in Atlanta, Georgia of eight people, including six women of Asian descent.
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GROWING CONCERN IN ASIAN COMMUNITIES
Racial Bigotry Fuels Anti-Asian Hate Crimes
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”
―
TORONTO - The rhetoric of bigotry has given birth to a virus of hate directed at people of color, and lately, at the Asian communities in both Canada and the United States.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to claim lives and upend all manner of human activity, racially-driven attacks have spiked to unprecedented levels.
Critics and advocacy groups have laid the blame on Donald Trump, the former US president, who shamelessly referred, and continues to call the coronavirus the "China virus" and "Kung Flu", earning him the widespread mockery as the "hate-monger-in-chief".
"This is not a 'Wuhan Virus,' 'Chinese Virus,' or 'Asian Virus'. The official name for the disease was deliberately chosen to avoid stigmatization," explains Dr. Marietta Vazquez, Professor of Pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine.
"Do not attach locations or ethnicity to the disease," the Pediatric Global Health Track Director says in a published article. "We can better prevent the spread of COVID-10 and protect those who may have it when we speak about it with accuracy, empathy, and care - something we should all be committed to".
Warnings similar to what Dr. Vazquez has published in mid-March have been aired, apparently to lower the temperature of rising xenophobia.
Asians, individuals or groups, particularly Chinese, Korean, and Japanese are targeted, undoubtedly fueled by Trump's inflammatory speeches during his term and after he left office.
The latest violent reaction on March 16, 2021, had claimed the lives of eight victims, six of them women of Asian descent, in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia.
The white gunman identified by authorities as 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long is detained and charged with the murder, "the worst mass killing in the U.S. in almost two years," according to news reports.
"The tragic events that occurred in Atlanta are a reminder of the impacts of misogyny and white supremacy and how they intersect with the legacies of colonial violence and the stigmatization of massage parlour and sex work," the grassroots organization Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture said in a press statement in Toronto.
The sheriff in the area identified as Capt. Jay Baker downplayed the racial undertones of the killings, telling reporters that Long had a sex addiction and saw the massage parlors and spas where the women worked as "sources of temptation". Baker said Long was having a "bad day" during the attack.
Filipino-Canadian lawyer Paul Jonathan Saguil, who is currently seeking the nomination to be the official Liberal Party candidate in Brampton Centre, a Toronto suburb, reacted to the recent spate of violence. "As a long-time advocate for racialized communities, the reports of violence and discriminatory behavior against members of the Asian diaspora in Canada and the US are deeply disturbing".
"But we should not mistake this as a recent phenomenon or only caused by the pandemic -- bigotry (and misogyny) against Asians has a long history and manifests in many ways, often within the structure of our public institutions," he said.
"We all have a role in combatting the spread of hate and debunking harmful myths about people of Asian descent -- and that includes the important work that must be done within the various cultural groups to tear down historical divisions and create a common united front against racism," Saguil concluded.
State Rep. Bee Nguyen, the first Vietnamese American to serve in the Georgia House and a frequent advocate for women and communities of color, was quoted in the local press as saying the shootings appear to be at the “intersection of gender-based violence, misogyny and xenophobia.”
The Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter has disclosed that its web platforms recorded 1,150 cases of racist attacks from across Canada from the period March 10, 2020, to February 28, 2021.
Forty percent of the incidents were from Ontario where a large number of Filipinos live and work in the provincial capital of Toronto. British Columbia accounted for 44%.
Other highlights of the CCNC report:
•11% of all reported attacks and incidents contained a violent physical assault and/or unwanted physical contact.
•10% of all attacks and incidents included a form of assault through being coughed at and/or being spat on.
• Those who identify as women represent close to 60% of all reported cases, while those who identify as men are twice as likely to report a physical assault.
•While the majority of those impacted are East Asians (accounting for 84% of all reports), Southeast Asians also accounted for 6% of all reported incidents.
• In addition to public spaces, spaces in the food sector (grocery stores, restaurants etc.) were a prominent site of racist attacks accounting for almost 1/5th of all racist attacks/incidents.
On the other hand, the Stop AAPI Hate has received more than 2,800 firsthand reports of anti-Asian hate across 47 states and Washington, DC, since March 19.
"We are deeply concerned with the increase in hate crimes against the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community since the start of the pandemic," the US-Philippines Society, an independent bi-national non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, said in a press statement.
"The USPHS condemns violence, harassment and bias in all its forms against the AAPI community, including Filipino-Americans," it added.
The Filipina Women's Network (FWN), a San Francisco-based non-profit international advocacy organization, said it was "furious Atlanta authorities quickly determined that it was the murderer's 'sexual addiction' and the shootings 'do not appear to be' motivated by race."
"We grieve for the senseless deaths of eight individuals - six Asian women - four of Korean descent, murdered by a white man in a string of Atlanta-area spas," the FWN said, at the same time urging President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris "to take action now." (Copyright 2021. All Rights Reserved).
