Call to stem racism against Chinese community
A BIRMINGHAM councillor says police must do more to tackle racist abuse suffered by the British-Chinese community in the wake of Covid.
Cllr Alex Yip (Con, Sutton Wylde Green) wants to see the issue treated as a priority.
Phrases such as ‘F off back to China’ and ‘Here comes Covid’ were just two examples Cllr Yip used to highlight the abuse faced by members of the Chinese, and South-East
Asian community. There has been a three-fold rise in hate crime toward them since the start of Covid.
Cllr Yip told fellow councillors: “It’s national hate crime awareness week, and I’m one of the founding members of CARG, which is the Covid Anti Racism Group. We’ve seen a 300 per cent increase in the hate crime directed to people of Chinese, Asian and South-East Asian heritage, specifically because of Covid.
“We’ve had British-Chinese people, nothing to do with the outbreak over in China, who have been told to ‘F off back to China’, ‘Here comes Covid’ – a lot of racial abuse, physical violence, taunting.
“It has significant implications on the British-Chinese community in the whole of the country.
“And this is also frustrating because of the amount of under-reporting that has happened, and the number of prosecutions that have been followed up is relatively low. So I’d like something more to be done with the police to regard this as a priority.
“Police forces don’t necessarily understand the nuances in the Chinese community – there are two different languages, two different written formats. And it’s things like this that we really need to embed ourselves with, the nuances of the local community.”