WASHINGTON, Apr 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Spiking anti-Asian violence in the United States, prompted people in Asia to reconsider study plans at U.S. universities, and question their confidence in America as a world role model, reported USA TODAY.
Since the start of the pandemic, Americans scapegoating China as the source of COVID-19, targeted random Asian people, including the elderly, hurling racial slurs or even launching violent attacks, which resulted in deadly incidents, said the report.
On Mar 16, six of the eight people killed in a mass shooting at Atlanta-area spas were Asian women. On Apr 15, many of the victims in a shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis were Sikh, it said.
Asian people said, the violence soiled impressions of the United States as racially tolerant society and a top choice for overseas study and research, according to the newspaper.
“The human toll (from) the recent race-based violence, challenged those previously held beliefs” among South Koreans that, America was a model for good governance and multicultural society, Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul, said.
Japanese national Akiko Horiba, 43, said that, she found Americans to be “kind” during her graduate study in Boston from 2001 to 2003, but now she’s unsure whether she would come, if she had the chance again.
“I would be a little afraid to visit America because I’m a woman and I saw a video of someone beating Asian ladies, I don’t really recommend it to the younger generation,” Horiba, who works in Tokyo, said.
The Stop AAPI Hate, a group tracking incidents of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, received more than 2,808 firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate from Mar, 2020 through the end of the year.
The California-based advocacy group tracked 987, in the first two months of 2021, the report quoted the group as saying.– NNN-AGENCIES