Trump is 'legitimizing' hate incidents against Asian Americans: U.N. experts
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Trump is 'legitimizing' hate incidents against Asian Americans: U.N. experts
United Nations experts issued a mandate expressing “serious concern” regarding heightened racist and xenophobic attacks against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic .
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In the document made public this week, experts appointed by the Human Rights Council wrote that violence and attacks against people of Asian descent have reached an “alarming level” since the start of the outbreak. They also wrote that the reports indicate officials have taken insufficient action to mitigate the severity of the situation.
Based on the information provided to them, “U.S. authorities have utterly failed to take the steps required to detect, monitor, and prevent racist and xenophobic incidents,” the experts wrote. “One result of this state of impunity is that, many victims of such attacks are reportedly reluctant to seek justice.”
E. Tendayi Achiume — an author of the mandate who serves as special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance — told NBC Asian America that it’s difficult to draw a clear link between the “China virus” rhetoric, frequently used by President Donald Trump, and the hate attacks. But she said that’s not necessarily the point.
“I think it's absolutely the case that if you have the head of government speaking about groups in ways that stigmatizes them and associates them with the virus, it creates an environment where violence is more permissible and attacks are more permissible,” she said. "It really does legitimize those kinds of acts."
"The head of government is essentially legitimizing a climate where certain groups are wrongfully associated with a virus that affects everybody equally," Achiume said. "It's really a serious problem from a human rights perspective."
The mandate lays out examples of physical and verbal racist attacks and discrimination toward Asian Americans, including instances of stabbing, vandalism and refusal of service. It also points to the “China virus” rhetoric as among the verbal attacks, with experts writing that they are concerned with the “contribution of the President of the United States in seemingly legitimizing these violations.”
Achiume said thus far there’s been no accountability from the U.S. government on the issue. With the release of the mandate, she hopes the administration will respond, providing what steps they’ve taken to ensure Asian Americans aren’t subjected to this kind of discrimination and intolerance.
While mandates such as this have been met with varied degrees of enthusiasm in the past, Achiume said the relationship between the HRC and the Trump administration has been “especially hostile to engagement with international organizations like the U.N.”
“I don't want to make it seem as though this is a purely partisan issue where, you know, one party always responds and one party always fails to respond,” she said. “However, the Trump administration has taken a very antagonistic stance with respect to the U.N. generally and the Human Rights Council."
The U.S. withdrew from the HRC in 2018 as Nikki Haley, who was the ambassador to the U.N. at the time, accused the body of being "hypocritical and self-serving."
While Achiume hopes the Trump administration will take action, she said she believes the real mechanism for change and the true strategic value in the international body is to call attention to cases of intolerance and discrimination, particularly in cases that do not receive as much attention. Such actions aim to “ensure that there [are] groups at the national, the local level that will then take action to solve these problems,” she said.
“These are problems that have to be solved from within the U.S., rather than expecting that some kind of international cavalry will come in and solve the problem,” she said. “I think that's just not how we get change in the world.”
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Does anyone think that the xenophobic racist Donald Trump gives a shit about that?
Of course not, Trump's never given a shit about anything but himself. If he can misdirect some of the blame from himself to a foreign people or ethnicity he will regardless of the consequences. He'd throw his own mother under the bus if it was to save his skin. He didn't even have to think about throwing Asians under the bus, it was an automatic knee jerk reaction after realizing he was way out of his depth and actually facing a national emergency.
[Deleted]
[Do not respond on Buzz's discussion with posts he cannot view.]
If there's a photo in there somewhere that is significant here, please produce it. Don't just spray irrelevant items.
You understand the notion of "relevance", don't you?
The post wasn’t directed at him nor was it in response to him. Why should Chinas rules that affect him there affect Americans here?
[Since Buzz is the originator of the discussion, and is expected to moderate it, he needs access to all comments in order to do so. Also, your throwaway link was just that - it was not a response, and was not meant to be, and was therefore off topic.]
Fascists always need scapegoats. Black people are unacceptable, of course. Also Brown people. And Slant-eyed people.
He hasn't gotten around to Jews yet, but fascists always do, eventually.
He's apt to spread his xenophobic racism to brown and black people - he's already harmed Asians, but he may have a dilemma with Jews since his favourite daughter and grandchildren are Jewish.
Some of my best friends are Jews...
If I say that my best friend is a Buddhist, does that mean I'm antibuddhist?
Indubitably...
This is what was done to the sign welcoming people to the Red Lake Ojibwe reservation earlier this week. (my people and reservation)
It was a Trump-supporting Nazi who is helping to prove that Nazis support Trump because he supports them, and why is anyone surprised at that?
Dear China,
We, Americans, cannot deny the demonization and dehumanization of China and by extension the Chinese people suffered at the hands of Donald Trump and his loyal minions right in front of our very own lying eyes and ears. How could we? Demonizing and dehumanizing whole groups of people is allowable now in America as long as Donald Trump has an angle to hate you. So, China...
Welcome To The Club! Is this your first time here?
Signed,
Democrats, Muslims, Hispanics, Gays, the Media...
As I am no more than a temporary guest in China (I must continually renew my residency visa), I cannot speak for its government, but I can speak for the Chinese people I know, and obviously I know many, and in fact have known many for much of my life, and I can say that Chinese people have struggled to be welcomed in America, and that goes back to the manner in which they were treated when brought to America to help build the rail lines and especially by the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act long before a century ago. So it is NOT their "first time here". But what is particulary ironic is that the Native Americans are treated by so many Americans as UNWELCOME, when in fact America was THEIR land long before the Europeans came.
Yes, it is true that Spanish speaking natives inhabited the American West and South West for a couple of hundred years before English speaking Europeans overran them forcing them out or into subhuman subservient conditions.
White-supremacy doesn't allow much introspection.