The Manhattan district attorney announced Thursday that his team has been working on record criminality against people of Asian descent since a special unit was established more than a decade ago in the aftermath of an assault on a southern diplomat. -Korean in New York.
“Unfortunately, our office is currently investigating 33 racial hate crime cases motivated by anti-Asian bias, the most (highest number) we have had since our racial crimes unit was established in 2010.”said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He added that he continued “nearly four times more anti-Asian hate crimes” in 2021 compared to the previous year.
Racist attacks against people of Asian descent have increased in the United States since 2020 and the beginnings of the coronavirus pandemic. Some activists blame the rhetoric used by former President Donald Trump who referred to Covid-19 as the “chinese virus”.
Authorities in New York have also attributed the rise in attacks to psychiatric disorders in a large number of perpetrators, problems exacerbated by the disruption of social services during the pandemic that has hit the largest American city hard.
50-year-old man charged
Prosecutor Bragg released those numbers when announcing the indictment of a 50-year-old suspect for the April 23, 2021 attack in the East Harlem neighborhood of “Yao Pan Ma, a 61-year-old Chinese immigrant”, who succumbed to his injuries several months later. The suspect, who was already being prosecuted, was charged with racially charged murder.
On Wednesday evening, a South Korean diplomat in the country’s mission to the UN was injured after being assaulted by “an unidentified man” in New York, the South Korean Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday, without specifying whether it was a racist attack.
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