Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, another concomitant pandemic named as xenophobia has also enveloped whole the world. As per reported incidents so far, xenophobia, more specifically sinophobia, is surging at an exponential rate across the globe. Stigmatization of Chinese people in wake of outbreak of coronavirus has become new normal in the world. People now look at Chinese with humongous disdain and contempt for they consider them as sole responsible for all the physical and mental afflictions that they are undergoing nowadays due to the COVID-19 which showed its first appearance in Chinese city of Wuhan.
Moreover, this discrimination and antipathy is not only restricted to the Chinese people but people of East Asian and south Asian descent having appearance and facial resemblance with Chinese are also facing xenophobia, prejudice, racial apartheid and violence.
US President Donald Trump’s frequent references to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” has been criticized as anti-Chinese and racist, as well as diversionary
Admittedly, disease inculcates fear in human minds which in turn fosters discrimination. This had been happening in the history whenever there was outbreak of any pandemic. The chronological account of the world shows that during 1853, yellow-fever epidemic in the United States and European immigrants, who were perceived to be more vulnerable to the disease, were primary targets of stigmatization. During the SARS outbreak, which originated in China, East Asian bore the brunt. When the Ebola outbreak emerged in 2014, Africans were targeted. For this reason, the World Health Organization, which is keenly overseeing the global response to the coronavirus outbreak, opted against denoting a geographic location when officially naming the new virus, as it did with Ebola (named after the river in Congo, where it was first detected) and the 2012, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome popularly known as MERS. “Stigma to be honest is more dangerous than virus itself,” remarked Dr Tedros Adhanom, the director general of the WHO in his press talk.
However, we find newspapers replete with news pertaining to ballooning xenophobia and racial discrimination in the wake of outbreak of COVID-19. Surprisingly, even the country where from the virus was originated is not immune to this social epidemic of stigmatization. According to the world journal, there have been countless instances of Wuhan natives in other provinces being turned away from hotels, because of their ID numbers, home addresses and telephone numbers deliberately leaked online or dealing with harassing phone calls from strangers. Some places also reportedly had signs saying “People from Wuhan and cars from Hubei are not welcomed here”.
In addition, on March 29, British daily The Guardian reported that Western and African expatriates in China were reporting enhanced racial hostility and discrimination in response to a shift of COVID-19 cases from local to imported ones. It claims that media in China have published articles entitled as “Beware of a second outbreak started by foreign garbage”, and incidents of foreigners being barred from restaurants, shops, gyms and hotels, subjected to further screening, and verbal attacks and exclusion are mounting in china day in day out.
Moreover, people of Hong Kong have also started displaying their antipathy for the people of mainland China. The restaurants in Hong Kong are now demanding customers to produce identity card of Hong Kong in order to prove that they are not from mainland. Tenno Ramen, a Japanese noodle restaurant in Hung Hom, refused to serve mainland Chinese customers. The restaurant said on Facebook, “We want to live longer. We want to safeguard local customers. Please excuse us”.
Indians too are evincing unjustified bias and prejudice towards Chinese people. Indian Islamic cleric Ilyas Sharfuddin said in an audio address that the coronavirus outbreak was a “punishment of ALLAH on China for mistreating Uighur Muslims”. Ilyas said that “they (the Chinese) have threatened the Muslims and tried to destroy lives of 20 million Muslims. Muslims were forced to drink alcohol, their mosques were destroyed and their Holy Book was burned. They thought that no one can challenge them, but Allah the most powerful, punished them.”
Apart from this, in Israel, more than 1,000 South Korean tourists were instructed to avoid public places and remain in isolation in their hotels. The Israeli military announced its intention to quarantine some 200 South Korean nationals to a military base. Many of the South Koreans were rejected by hotels and were forced to spend nights at Ben Gaurian Airport. An Israeli newspaper subsequently published a Korean complaint that “Israel is treating (Korean and other Asian) tourists like coronavirus”.
Sadly, in Japan also, the situation is no more different for Chinese, as the hashtag #ChineseDontComeToJapan has been trending on Twitter; furthermore, on Twitter, Japanese people have called Chinese tourists “dirty”, “insensitive”, and “bioterrorists”. According to an Ipsos MORI poll, 28% of Japanese respondents said they would consider avoiding people of Chinese origin in the future to protect themselves from coronavirus.
What’s more is that even in Singapore, An online petition urging the Singaporean government to ban Chinese nationals and travellers from China from entering the island country was signed by 125,000 people.
To add, the Ministry of Home Affairs of Singapore has ordered an investigation against an Islamic teacher, Abdul Halim bin Abdul Karim, after he posted on Facebook that the coronavirus pandemic was “a retribution by Allah against the Chinese for their oppressive treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinxiang”. In a separate post, Abdul Halim claimed that Chinese people do not wash properly after defecating and were not as hygienic as Muslims, causing the virus to spread. Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam slammed the comments as “silly”, “xenophobic” and “thoroughly racist” and is “quite unacceptable from anyone, let alone someone who is supposed to be a religious teacher”.
Even in England, on February 12, 2020, Sky News reported that some Chinese people in the United Kingdom said they were facing increasing levels of racist abuse; Chinese businesses in the United Kingdom, including the busy Chinese Takeaway segment and businesses in China Town, London recorded significantly reduced customers in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak compared to usual elevated sales related to Chinese New year celebrations, due to fears of coronavirus spreading through food or unhygienic working practices.
Also in America, there have been reports of over 1,000 xenophobia and racism cases against Asian Americans between January 28 and February 24, 2020, which was during the first COVID-19 cases that were reported in the United States. Media critique organization ‘FAIR’ has documented instances of anti-Asian racism on the street, and states that many US (as well as UK) media outlets capitalize on Sinophobia and “Orientalist tropes” that the Chinese are inherently sneaky and untrustworthy, and are ruled by an incompetent, authoritarian government that is the ‘sick man of Asia'”.
Moreover, US President Donald Trump’s frequent references to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” has been criticized as anti-Chinese and racist, as well as diversionary. Trump continued to use this phrase despite criticism from Democratic legislators as well as Asian American advocates and Public health experts, who said that the use of the phrase inflamed tensions and cited a surge in attacks on Asian Americans. Scott Kennedy, an expert at the center for strategic and international studies, said that Trump’s use of the phrase fueled a narrative relating not only to the Chinese Communist Party “but of China and Chinese people in general” and was “xenophobic and tinged with racist overtones,” especially given the Trump administration’s past statements and actions.
To conclude, hope that the world will soon surmount the ongoing pandemic but the pandemic of xenophobia launched particularly against Chinese people and generally against the people of East Asian and South Asian descent, if not inhibited earnestly, would continue to haunt the generations to come and thereby jeopardize the peace of the world.
The writer is a lawyer based in Jafarabad, Balochistan