a new law against anti-Asian violence

In response to protests against anti-Asian violence, the US Congress adopted on Tuesday, May 19 a law to protect Asian Americans against racism and violence which has increased with the Covid-19 pandemic, according to defenders of the text.

The law, known as the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act, aims in particular to expedite the examination of reported cases racist violence targeting Asian Americans, communicate better on this problem and help states and local communities to better combat them.

Parliamentarians have already denounced for months the increase in this violence, fueled according to them by speeches blaming China for the pandemic, while the Atlanta massacre in March sparked a wave of fear and outrage. The Democratic-majority House of Representatives adopted the text on Tuesday by 364 votes to 62 votes. It was approved almost unanimously in the Senate in April.

According to Nancy Pelosi, in the 12 months since March 2020, when the pandemic hit the United States hard, “more than 6,600 forms of discrimination and violence against AAPI “, an acronym for Americans from Asia and the Pacific Islands, have been reported in all 50 US states. This law” will allow racist crimes in America to be tackled in a profoundly different way, not just during the pandemic , but in the years to come, “said Nancy Pelosi in the hemicycle.