Asian Americans go online to tell of verbal, physical abuse in US
More than 1,000 Asian Americans have logged on to a website to share stories of being verbally and physically attacked - many coughed at and spat upon - because the coronavirus originated in China.
A gun-store owner in Los Angeles County - home to the largest population of Asians in the United States at 1.5 million - told The Straits Times he has seen a surge in Asian customers in recent months, many of them first-time buyers.
There are certainly compelling reasons for Asian Americans to be fearful these days.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) analysis, obtained by ABC News, "assesses that hate crime incidents against Asian Americans likely will surge across the US... based on the assumption that a portion of the US public will associate Covid-19 with China and Asian-American populations".
At a Texas supermarket last month, a man stabbed a Chinese-American family, including children aged two and six, because he thought the family was infecting people with the virus.
Hundreds of news reports about similar incidents this year prompted Dr Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, to set up an online reporting centre for personal accounts of such experiences.
Launched on March 19 with the help of two California-based advocacy groups - the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council, and Chinese for Affirmative Action - the Stop AAPI Hate website (www.a3pcon.org/stopaapihate) has amassed more than 1,000 reports, or about 100 a day, as of March 30.
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