Reports of anti-Asian hatred in Ottawa rose dramatically during the pandemic. Community members say it’s more likely to be worse than the statistics show.

Article content

Members of Ottawa’s Asian community are subtle, whether explicit or explicit, whether they use anti-Asian slurs loudly and publicly, avoid them in grocery stores, or the nasty online rhetoric surrounding a pandemic. But anti-Asian hatred is still their concern.

Article content

“Anti-Asian crime and hate crimes against Asians are nothing new in our community,” said Yukang Li, Executive Director of Somerset Street Chinatown Business Improvement Area. “This is common, especially as the number of anti-Asian cases surged during pandemics.”

Hate crimes increased during the pandemic. Currently, Ottawa police are receiving more hate crime reports and investigating more cases. Members of the Asian community in Ottawa said the OPS aggregated 14 anti-Asian hatred cases in 2020 and 21 in 2021 due to the exclusion of foreigners due to the pandemic. In 2019, prior to COVID-19, Ottawa had only two cases of anti-Asian hatred reported by police.

So far this year, a spokesperson for Ottawa police said the number of reports of hatred or prejudice targeting Asian communities was “slightly less than last year.” However, the service did not provide 2022 statistics and refused to request an interview with Hate Climb Investigator.

Article content

“These numbers look very high, but I think the situation could be even worse,” Lee said of police statistics.

Lee said that many Asian communities, including some business owners in Chinatown, chose not to report the case to the police, due to language barriers, or the case did not reach the level of crime. He said he was uncomfortable contacting the authorities because he felt that.

“When I talk to business members, some of them say,” It’s useless to call the police because it’s actually harmless. ” That’s what I call recessive racism. We just look at it and avoid the people of Asia, “Lee said. “Sometimes it’s an attitude that the police can’t do much.

“For these reasons, I think the actual number of incidents against Asian groups must be higher than OPS has.”

Article content

He added that Chinatown has just begun to recover after two years of difficult closures. Business has begun to return, but merchants now have to fight hatred in addition to other challenges, such as increased drug use in the region and the apparent financial distress that is emerging during a pandemic. ..

Dennis Kao, an associate professor of social work at Carlton University and a researcher who monitors anti-Asia hatred and its effects, said police reports have been stable or declining. He said that racism does not mean that it is.

“They have some urgency when reported to the police,” he said. “These are cases that approach some degree of crime, whether or not they include violence, some form of assault, verbal abuse, etc. They meet the thresholds that occur on a daily basis, apparently not reported to the police. There are many cases that are not.

Article content

“For two years, the community has said this is happening, but I’m not sure if people were really paying attention.”

Like the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s tweet, which Kao called COVID-19 a “Chinese virus,” hatred has serious negative effects and mental health, whether it occurs directly or online. He said it would have an impact.

“I think things are a little tapered,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that anxiety doesn’t exist. We’re not talking about our mental health or emotional well-being who have directly experienced some of these experiences, or seeing it in the media, Seeing that happening, you see people whose grandparents and parents appear to be under attack …. Seeing such things can sometimes be overly anxious, afraid, and simple. You need to be vigilant when you go out to do your errands. “

Article content

Le Huang, a member of the board of directors of the Vietnamese Canadian community in Ottawa and working to improve the well-being of older people isolated from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, said Le Huang, a volunteer he works with in Vietnam. As mentioned that older people often dealt with Ottawa’s hatred.

“Vietnamese can make it worse,” he said. “We advise seniors. It happens. They just leave.”

A spokesperson for the Chinese-Canada group, an Otawa-based non-profit organization dedicated to investigating the experiences, problems and representatives of Chinese-Canadas, has described the racism experienced by Asians during the pandemic in the past. Racism and long-standing systematic prejudice in Canadian society.

Article content

“What happened during COVID-19 was nothing new,” the spokesman wrote, refusing to give their name. “It was another wave of racism that was not surprising. We saw it during the internment in Japan, and it must have happened again. After this, it will happen again.”

Ottawa can help fight anti-Asian hatred by providing more multilingual services, and the community can more fully portray what is happening by reporting hatred events to police. BIA director Lee said it can help, but it’s never easy to repair.

“The fight against racism is a long-term effort that our community, our society, must undertake,” he said. “There is no immediate change in this situation, but what we can do as a community member … let the public know the seriousness of racism and what it does for victims and minority groups. , Grow society. Awareness of the harm of hate crimes, general awareness. “

Article content

Researcher Kao said he saw Asian hatred waning and flowing in line with public discourse. This may be promoted by world leaders like Trump.

“I think people tend to wipe out when President Trump at the time says something like a’Chinese virus’. They don’t necessarily understand the harm,” he said. “One thing to get rid of from all this: I think language is really important. When world leaders say something like” Chinese virus “… Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and even a little Even for indigenous peoples who are considered to look Asian, there is a high scale of anti-Asian racial discrimination. I saw this. “

Hate crimes can be reported to OPS by calling extension 613-236-1222. 7300.