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Atlanta killings spark a raw debate about Asian-Americans, Trump and rhetoric

March 19, 2021 Admin Leave a comment

Last September, when the House passed a resolution condemning anti-Asian bigotry and discrimination, every Democrat voted for it—joined by just 14 Republicans.

Why did this symbolic vote become a partisan battle?

House Republican Whip Steve Scalise said lawmakers were “wasting their time with the measure,” but the Democratic sponsor, Grace Meng, said “people’s lives are at stake.”

The horrific shootings in Atlanta have plunged the country into an acute awareness, and difficult debate, over hatred aimed at this community. And, as with every mass killing or terror attack, political finger-pointing has immediately been woven into that very raw discussion.

Whether the murder of eight people, six of them Asian-American women, at three spas fits the strict legal definition of hate crime is a matter for law enforcement. President Biden is heading to Atlanta today to show his concern about what he called “brutality” against Asian-Americans. What’s beyond dispute is that many in the community are understandably frightened.

We spent much of last year grappling with racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, as well as unacceptable violence in the riots that followed. The media spend enormous amounts of time and energy in chronicling bias and crime against certain communities: Violence against blacks. Violence against Jews. Violence against Muslims.

Unfortunately, Asian-Americans are way down on the radar screen.

Despite a long history of discrimination—from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to Japanese internment during World War II–they have been viewed in recent decades as a model minority. The image is that of people who work hard, don’t make trouble and whose children get stellar grades.

TALE OF TWO PRESIDENTS: BIDEN, NOT TRUMP, GRABS HEADLINES WITH ABC SITDOWN

They have also been stereotyped as quiet and subservient. They don’t tend to rise to the highest political jobs and have little visibility in the media. Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant mother, is an exception, and so is Andrew Yang.

Experts say there is no revolting symbol of bigotry, like the noose or the swastika, against people of Asian descent. So sometimes there are disputes over whether a robbery of an Asian-American small business, for instance, is a hate crime.

But when Amara Walker, a Korean-American reporter for CNN, was doing a live shot for Don Lemon, someone drove by and shouted “Virus!”

Which brings us to the renewed complaints about Donald Trump referring to the “China virus,” as he did again this week, or the “Wuhan virus,” or “Kung flu,” as he has in the past. Liberals and Democrats have long complained that Trump was contributing to a climate of bias against Asian-Americans.

I hate how the Chinese regime originally covered up and mishandled the coronavirus, but I also believed Trump’s use of these terms was an unattractive attempt to score political points.

There is a huge difference between that and tying the former president in any way to the violence in Atlanta.

As with all such mass shootings, it comes down to a crazy person with a gun. And I say after every tragic case that it’s unfair to say politicians have blood on their hands because some nutjob had access to destructive weapons.

The Oklahoma City bombing wasn’t Rush Limbaugh’s fault, as Bill Clinton insinuated. The shooting of Gabby Giffords wasn’t Sarah Palin’s fault. The shooting of police officers wasn’t Barack Obama’s fault. The shooting of Steve Scalise at a Republican baseball practice wasn’t the fault of liberals who the gunman admired. And Atlanta isn’t Trump’s fault.

It’s fine to debate and criticize the rhetoric by a president or former president, but to go beyond that quickly descends into the fever swamps of partisanship.

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At a House hearing yesterday, Rep. Doris Matsui, who was born in a Japanese-American internment camp, said that last year, “as I heard, at the highest levels of government, people use racist slurs, like ‘China virus,’ to spread xenophobia and cast blame on innocent communities, it was all too familiar.”

But Republican Rep. Chip Roy, after denouncing Beijing’s handling of the virus, said: “My concern about this hearing is it seems to want to venture into the policing of rhetoric.”

This debate may or may not turn ugly, but it is long overdue.

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Asian Americans were already living in fear. The Atlanta-area spa killings feel like a terrifying escalation for them

March 17, 2021 Admin Leave a comment

Many Asian Americans across the United States have been verbally harassed, spat on and injured for months in a “disgusting pattern of hate” that coincides with the Covid-19 pandemic. The killings of eight people, most of them Asian, at three spas in the Atlanta area Wednesday jolted a community already on edge, even as law enforcement has not yet determined a motive.

“We don’t know if this incident is racially motivated, but you have to understand the deep-seated fear that our community is experiencing,” said Cynthia Choi, one of the co-founders of Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition tracking violence and harassment against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

“At this time, if there’s no proof, we can’t rule it out either because of the fact that Covid (19) was racialized, the fact that a majority of the victims were Asian women,” Choi added.

The shootings in the Atlanta area left the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community across the country in mourning and feeling that it was a devastating escalation to the violence that has become increasingly familiar for them.

“I feel like that just took it to a whole other extreme,” said Hanna Kim, a teacher from Novi, Michigan.

Kim, a 24-year-old Korean American, said she often feels like she has a target on her back. Last year, a parent wanted to remove one of her students from her second-grade class because Kim was Asian.

“Are people going to say things to me?” Kim said she often asks herself. “Are people going to avoid me because they think that for some reason I’m going to be the one that’s spreading the virus?”

Advocates and members of the AAPI community have said they have made changes to their daily routines out of caution. In a survey conducted by the Florida State University last year, more than half of the Asian Americans respondents said they opted to avoid certain places, observe their surroundings and were careful about language and wording they used.

Hours before the shootings, Stop AAPI Hate had released its latest data on the number of firsthand complaints they’ve received. The report was part of an effort to renew their call for concrete action against the targeted bigotry and discrimination.

Since March 19 last year, the group has received a total of 3,292 complaints from all 50 states and Washington, DC. In the last two months, there were at least 503 anti-Asian hate incidents reported, the group said.

The majority of the incidents — about 68% — were cases of verbal harassment, while shunning or avoidance made up about 20.5%. About 11% of the incidents involved physical assaults, according to Stop AAPI Hate.

State Rep. Sam Park, who was the first Asian American Democrat elected to the state house in Georgia in 2016, said there’s a “palpable fear and anxiety” in the Atlanta area following the shootings.

“Regardless of whether it was motivated by race, it was an attack against Asian American women, against members of our community, and of course we want to do everything that we can to protect everyone,” Park told CNN.

Across the entire Atlanta metro area, the Asian American and Pacific Islander population has grown significantly in recent years — mirroring the trend of the increasing and diversifying population across the state.

During the presidential and Senate runoff elections, AAPIs were a key part in campaign strategy. While AAPIs are a small share of the electorate in Georgia, the number of Asian American voters grew seven times as much as other racial and ethnic groups combined in the state.

The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum said some of its members in Atlanta were concerned about the safety of their families, including those who work in salons.

“We are appalled and devastated at the violence in Georgia that has taken eight lives, six of whom were Asian American women. We mourn with the families of these victims. We are horrified and continue to be concerned for the safety of our community members across the country as violence toward Asian Americans has escalated,” Sung Yeon Choimorrow, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

In recent months, advocates, actors and officials have come together to denounce violence following a string of attacks in California and New York that left several people severely injured and some dead.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who has previously spoken about the racism she and her family members in this country have faced, said the shootings have “frightened” all people.

“(K)nowing the increasing level of hate crimes against our Asian American brothers and sisters, we also want to speak out in solidarity with them and acknowledge that none of us should ever be silent in the face of any form of hate,” Harris said during a bilateral meeting with Irish officials commemorating St. Patrick’s Day.

Last week, President Joe Biden addressed the nation on the one-year anniversary of the Covid-19 shutdown. During his speech, he condemned the hate and discrimination that Asian Americans have faced.

CNN’s Nicquel Terry Ellis, Natasha Chen, Priya Krishnakumar and Madeline Holcombe contributed to this report.

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World

Ethiopia’s secret war in Tigray region: Ethnic killings, rapes, near-starvation reported

February 14, 2021 Admin Leave a comment

Many women have “conclusively and without a doubt” been raped in the Tigray region, home to Ethiopia’s secretive conflict.

The fighting may have left tens of thousands of civilians dead, the country’s minister for women said Thursday in a rare government admission of its fallout.

More than 100 women in the largely remote northern region have reported being raped amid the four-month-long conflict between Ethiopian forces and allied fighters – including Eritrean fighters whose presence is denied – and the fugitive former leaders of Tigray who long dominated Ethiopia’s government.

The rape allegations have come out despite women having few police or health facilities for reporting alleged crimes.

“Hence, there is a possibility that the actual number of cases might be higher and more widespread than the reported cases,” the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said in a report of the 108 alleged rapes over the last two months.

Both sides in the conflict that started in early November see the other as illegitimate after last year’s national elections were delayed because of the coronavirus and Tigray defiantly held its own.

MORE THAN 100 KILLED ALONG ETHNIC LINES IN ETHIOPIA

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed once said no civilian had been killed in the conflict, but more recently he admitted it has “caused much distress for me personally.”

Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, attempted to centralize power in the country in September and was reportedly furious over Tigray’s decision to hold its own election after the national elections were postponed.

Refugees fleeing the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region ride a bus going to the Village 8 temporary shelter, near the Sudan-Ethiopia border, in Hamdayet, eastern Sudan, Dec. 1, 2020. (Associated Press)

Hailu Kebede, foreign affairs head for the Salsay Woyane Tigray opposition party, called the conflict the “least-documented” war, estimating along with two others, that more than 52,000 civilians have died over the last few months.

“The world will apologize to the people of Tigray, but it will be too late,” he told The Associated Press.

Journalists have been barred from the region where communications are patchy but accounts from survivors who have escaped paint an unthinkable picture of the atrocities occurring in the region.

600 BODIES FOUND IN TIGRAY TOWN AFTER CLASH WITH ETHIOPIAN TROOPS: REPORT

Disturbing reports have included claims of people being forced to rape members of their own family under threat of violence and women forced to have sex with soldiers in exchange for basic necessities.

“Many, many severe cases of malnutrition” have been also reported in the region where the vast majority of its 6 million citizens remain unreachable, the Red Cross said Wednesday. The organization said thousands could starve to death.

A woman from Tigray studying in Europe said Ethiopian soldiers had recently come to her village with food but are withholding it from families suspected of having ties to Tigray fighters.

“If you don’t bring your father, your brothers, you don’t get the aid, you’ll starve,” the woman told the Associated Press after speaking to her sister who lives in the Tigray.

She also learned that her uncle and two nephews were killed by Eritrean soldiers during a recent holiday gathering. A local advocacy association, relying on witnesses who have reached cities with phone service, has listed 59 victims overall.

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“I’m so ashamed of my government,” the student, speaking on condition of anonymity for her family’s safety, cried. And since it’s nearly impossible to contact people in the region she said she worries if “somebody from my family dies, I will learn about it from Facebook.”

An American nurse who was visiting her family in the border town of Rama estimated looting Eritrean soldiers had left 1,000 dead.

She was able to fly out of the country and return to her home in Colorado.

If the fighting doesn’t end soon, she told the AP, “we’ll be left without families.”

Fox News’ Edmund DeMarche and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Tag Archives: killings

Atlanta killings spark a raw debate about Asian-Americans, Trump and rhetoric

Asian Americans were already living in fear. The Atlanta-area spa killings feel like a terrifying escalation for them

Ethiopia’s secret war in Tigray region: Ethnic killings, rapes, near-starvation reported

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