Atlanta spa shooting: Hate crimes against Asian-Americans have increased sharply

A day before a man killed eight people during a shooting spree in the Atlanta area, a Georgia state senator warned of a rising tide of hate crimes aimed at Asian Americans, saying “we need help, we need protection, and we need people in power to stand up for us against hate.”

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Photos: Demonstrations, vigils held across country in wake of Atlanta spa shootings Activists participate in a vigil in response to the Atlanta spa shootings March 17, 2021, in the Chinatown area of Washington, D.C. A gunman opened fire in three spas in the Atlanta, Georgia area, the day before killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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Sen. Michelle Au, speaking from the Georgia Senate floor, told colleagues Monday that between 2019 and 2020 there had been a 150% increase in crimes against Asian Americans in the United States.

On Tuesday, the shootings at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area left eight dead, six of them women of Asian descent.

“Asian Americans are part of our country’s plurality. We are some of the many, and we’re part of that one,” she said. “And all I’m asking right now, as the first East Asian state senator in Georgia, is simply to fully consider us as part of our communities. Recognize that we need help, we need protection, and we need people in power to stand up for us against hate.”

Au is a first-generation Chinese American who was elected to Georgia’s state senate in November.

The man arrested for the shootings, Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, Georgia, shot nine people in the spree. Long has admitted to the shootings, according to police.

Au’s comments come as cities across the country are reporting increases in attacks on Asian Americans.

An analysis released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, pointed to the 150% increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans in 16 U.S. cities during 2020.

The hate crimes examined in the study ranged from verbal abuse and vandalization of Asian-owned businesses to physical attacks.

According to The Washington Post, the New York Police Department saw at least 28 hate crimes that targeted Asian American victims last year, versus three reported in 2019.

On the West Coast, San Francisco’s preliminary data shows that nine hate crimes targeted Asian Americans in 2020. In 2018, the number was four.

Stop AAPI Hate, a group that tracks incidents of violence and harassment against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S., also saw a sharp increase in attacks in the past year, according to a story from National Public Radio.

AAPI reported nearly 3,800 instances of attacks – both verbally and physically – against Asians between March 19, 2020, a week after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, and Feb. 28 of this year.

In a New York Times story from March 2020, Asian Americans reported increased incidents of harassment and assault. Those interviewed in the story said that they believed incidents of violence were increasing because people were blaming Asian Americans for the COVID-19 virus and former President Donald Trump was helping with that misconception by constantly referring to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus.”

According to the Times, in interviews over a one-week period “nearly two dozen Asian-Americans across the country said they were afraid “to go grocery shopping, to travel alone on subways or buses, to let their children go outside. Many described being yelled at in public — a sudden spasm of hate that is reminiscent of the kind faced by American Muslims, Arabs and South Asians in the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

Trump has said he used the term as a slap back at Chinese officials who claimed that the American military was the source of the outbreak of the virus that has claimed more than 500,000 lives in the U.S. and millions worldwide.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder and director of AAPI Data, told NBC News that use of the term by members of the Trump administration served to fuel the notion that Asian Americans were somehow responsible for the virus.

“What Trump did is that he weaponized it in a way,” Ramakrishnan said. “Trump’s rhetoric helps set a certain narrative in place — and presidents have an outsized role in terms of shaping narrative.”

“They don’t call it a bully pulpit for nothing, and especially Trump, the way he frequently used Twitter as well as press conferences and off-the-cuff remarks to campaign rallies to frame the narrative in a particular way, it likely played a role.”

Two cases of violence against Asian Americans were the topic of a press conference in Seattle on Friday.

Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman and FBI Special Agent in Charge Donald M. Voiret, highlighted the federal role in countering hate crimes and bias acts — especially those targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

“Currently federal prosecutors and the FBI are reviewing two cases involving assaults on our Asian American neighbors that have been charged by the King County (Washington) Prosecuting Attorney’s Office,” Gorman said.

“These crimes, and other acts of hate and bias, have no place in our community. I urge members of our community to report hate-based crimes to either local or federal law enforcement and to contact our office’s civil rights line with information about discrimination in areas like housing, employment, education, or public accommodations,” Gorman added.

According to Voiret, the FBI is looking at criminal acts targeting Asians as hate crimes, which carry heavier criminal sentences.

Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia have enacted hate crime laws. There are also several federal hate crime statutes.

“Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, we want to emphasize that a criminal act against Asians, because of their ethnicity or national origin, is a hate crime. The FBI will use all authority under federal law to investigate and bring the offenders to justice.”

Cox Media Group