It's not clear, however, that race or ethnicity played any role in the attack. His office has charged 19-year-old Antoine Watson with murder and elder abuse causing death. "This was a horrific, senseless attack, and I send my deepest condolences to the Ratanapakdee family for this unthinkable pain," District Attorney Chesa Boudin said after the killing. In San Francisco, the mayor, police chief and district attorney have all denounced the crimes and vowed to take action. "And sometimes they have even weaponized the former president himself saying 'Trump is going to get you, go back to your country.' What President Trump did was to foment hate against Asian American communities and really put people in harm's way.We need so much work to be done to undo some of the harm of the prior administration." "Oftentimes, perpetrators have used the exact language of the prior president, words like 'Wuhan virus, kung flu, China virus, China plague,' "Kulkarni says. "Asians across the board have been targeted by racial slurs, being attacked, being pushed around, being spat on."Ĭivil rights advocate Kulkarni also shared criticism of politically charged speech. "Racist rhetoric from the pandemic has targeted us as being the reason for the coronavirus," Wu says, singling out phrases used by former President Trump to describe the outbreak's origins. Actor and director Daniel Wu, who also is an East Bay native, led an effort to help stop what he described recently as an epidemic of hate-fueled language. The Bay Area attacks and increased harassment nationwide have rallied support from those in arts, too. The Oakland Anti Police-Terror Project has asked people "to wear yellow to show you're in support of Chinatown seniors and businesses." In the wake of the attacks several Oakland city council members including Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas, whose district includes Chinatown, have joined social justice groups warning against scapegoating and calling for solidarity between Asian American and African American communities. "And roughly 7 to 8% of those, unfortunately, come from elders in our community who have experienced incidents, not unlike the ones that have taken place in recent days," Kulkarni says.ĭespite arrests in some of the high-profile attacks, the violence has prompted many Chinatown businesses to reduce hours during a normally bustling shopping period ahead of Friday's Lunar New Year holiday. From last March through the end of 2020, Kulkarni's group has documented nearly 3,000 incidents of anti-Asian hate across 47 states and the District of Columbia. The more than two dozen recent assaults and robberies in the Bay Area mirror a national rise in hate crimes against older Asian Americans during the pandemic. "These attacks taking place in the Bay Area are part of a larger trend of anti-Asian American/Pacific Islander hate brought on in many ways by COVID-19, as well as some of the xenophobic policies and racist rhetoric that were pushed forward by the prior administration," says Manju Kulkarni, executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, a coalition of California community-based groups. A 19-year-old man has been charged with murder and elder abuse. Ratanapakdee died of his injuries two days later. Surveillance cameras captured a man running at him full speed and smashing his frail body to the pavement. ![]() ![]() Later in the month, 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee was going for a morning walk in his San Francisco neighborhood.
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