- Along with deaths, hatred is also rising
By: Abdul Rasool Syed
Amid the covid-19 pandemic, another concomitant pandemic, xenophobia, has also enveloped the world. Xenophobia, more specifically sinophobia, is globally surging exponentially. Stigmatization of Chinese people for the coronavirus outbreak has become the new normal. People now look at Chinese with humungous disdain for they consider them solely responsible for all the physical and mental afflictions they are undergoing nowadays due to the covid-19 outbreak which first appeared in China’s Wuhan city.
Moreover, this discrimination is not only restrcicted to the Chinese, but people of East Asian and South Asian descent resembling Chinese are also facing xenophobia, prejudice, racial apartheid and violence.
Disease inculcates fear and thus discrimination. This has been happening at any pandemic. During the 1853 US yellow–fever epidemic, European immigrants, perceived to be more vulnerable, were primary targets of stigmatization. During the SARS outbreak, which originated in China, East Asians bore the brunt. In the 2014 Ebola outbreak, Africans were targeted. For this reason, the WHO opted against denoting a geographic location when officially naming the new virus, as it did with Ebola and the 2012 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. “Stigma, to be honest, is more dangerous than virus itself” was remarked by WHO DG Dr Tedros Adhanom.
However, newspapers are replete with news of ballooning xenophobia and racial discrimination after the outbreak. Even the country where the virus originated is not immune to this social epidemic. Countless Wuhan natives have been turned away from hotels in other provinces, had their ID numbers, home addresses and telephone numbers deliberately leaked online or got harassing phone calls from strangers. Some places also reportedly had signs saying “people from Wuhan and cars from Hubei are not welcomed here.”
In addition, on 29 March, The Guardian reported that Western and African expatriates in China were reporting enhanced racial hostility and discrimination FTER a shift of covid-19 cases from local to imported ones. It claims that Chinese media have published articles entitled “Beware of a second outbreak started by foreign garbage”, and incidents of foreigners being barred from restaurants, shops, gyms and hotels, subjected to further screening, and increasing verbal attacks and exclusion.
There is hope the world will soon surmount the ongoing pandemic but the pandemic of xenophobia launched, particularly against Chinese people and generally against the people of East Asian and South Asian descent, if not inhibited earnestly, would continue to haunt the generations to come
Moreover, Hong Kongers have also started displaying antipathy for the people of mainland china. Hong Kong restaurants are now demanding customers produce Hong Kong identity cards to prove that they are not from the mainland. Tenno Ramen, a Japanese noodle restaurant, refused to serve mainland Chinese customers., saying on Facebook, “We want to live longer. We want to safeguard local customers. Please excuse us”.
Indians too are evincing bias against Chinese people. An Indian Islamic cleric Ilyas sharfuddin said in an audio address that the coronavirus outbreak was a “punishment of ALLAH on China for mistreating Uighur Muslims”.
Meanwhile, In Israel, over 1,000 South Korean tourists were instructed to avoid public places and remain in isolation in their hotels. The Israeli military announced its intention to quarantine some 200 South Koreans at a military base. Many of the rest were rejected by hotels and forced to spend nights at Ben Gurion Airport. An Israeli newspaper subsequently published a Korean complaint that “Israel is Treating (Korean and other Asian) Tourists like Coronavirus”.
Sadly, In Japan also, the situation is no more different for Chinese, the hashtag#ChineseDontComeToJapan trending on Twitter; furthermore, on Twitter, Japanese people have called Chinese tourists “dirty”, “insensitive”, and “bioterrorists”.
According to an Ipsos MORI poll, 28 percent of Japanese respondents said they would consider avoiding people of Chinese origin in the future to protect themselves from coronavirus.
What’s more is that even in Singapore, an online petition urging the Singaporean government to ban Chinese nationals and travellers from China from entering was signed by 125,000.
The Singapore Home Affairs Ministry has ordered an investigation against Islamic teacher Abdul Halim bin Abdul Karim, after he had posted on Facebook that the pandemic was “a retribution by Allah against the Chinese for their oppressive treatmentof uighur Muslims in xinjiang.” In a separate post, he claimed Chinese people did not wash properly after defecating and were not as hygienic as Muslims, causing the virus to spread. Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam slammed the comments as “silly”, “xenophobic” and “thoroughly racist” and “quite unacceptable from anyone, let alone someone who is supposed to be a religious teacher.”
Even in England, On 12 February, Sky News reported that some Chinese people said they were facing increasing levels of racist abuse; Chinese businesses, including the busy Chinese Takeaway segment and businesses in China Town, London, recorded significantly reduced customers in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak compared to usual elevated sales related to Chinese New Year celebrations.
In the USA, there have been reports of over 1000 xenophobia and racism cases against Asian-Americans between 28 January and 24 February, when the first COVID-19 cases that were being reported there. Media critique organization FAIR has documented instances of anti-Asian racism on the street, and states that many US (as well as UK) media outlets capitalize on Sinophobia and “Orientalist tropes”, that the Chinese are inherently sneaky and untrustworthy, and are ruled by an incompetent, authoritarian government that is the ‘sick man of Asia'”.
Moreover, U.S. President Donald Trump’s frequent references to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” has been criticized as anti-Chinese and racist, as well as diversionary. Trump continued to use this phrase despite criticism from Democratic legislators as well as Asian-American advocates and public health experts, who said that the use of the phrase inflamed tensions and cited a surge in attacks on Asian-Americans. Scott Kennedy, an expert at the center for strategic and international studies, said that Trump’s use of the phrase fueled a narrative relating not only to the Chinese Communist Party “but to China and Chinese people in general” and was “xenophobic and tinged with racist overtones,” especially given the Trump Administration’s past statements and actions.
There is hope the world will soon surmount the ongoing pandemic but the pandemic of xenophobia launched, particularly against Chinese people and generally against the people of East Asian and South Asian descent, if not inhibited earnestly, would continue to haunt the generations to come.
