The attacks on the AAPI community seem to keep coming despite police stepping up efforts, revamped prosecution rules and marches in the streets. Lili Tan reports.
The attacks on the AAPI community seem to keep coming despite police stepping up efforts, revamped prosecution rules and marches in the streets.
Among them is an incident at a Thai restaurant in Oakland this week, an Asian elder stabbed in June and one of the more well-known attacks: Vicha Ratanapakdee, a Thai man pushed to his death in January.
His daughter, Monthanus Ratanapakdee, attended a court hearing in San Francisco on Wednesday.
"It's still not safe," she said. "We saw every day old people still getting attacked."
For Asian American women in particular, there is still an overwhelming sense of fear.
"I have to bring a cane to protect me and my mom on a walk," said Catherine Poshetny, a friend of the Raranapakdee family.
"It's something really hard to hold back the tears," San Francisco resident Leanna Louie added. "It happened to my mother. My mother was beaten and mugged three times herself. And I was pushed around and punched.
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Cynthia Choi with the group Stop AAPI Hate said they have been in crisis mode for the past 18 months.
Choi helped found Stop AAPI Hate, which tracks incidents of hate. The group's reporting shows the attacks on the Asian American community are not slowing down.
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The nonprofit will release its new report in two weeks, documenting many more incidents of harassment, refusing service, and attacks since the spring.
"The AAPI community has experienced skyrocketing mental health challenges," Choi said. "So we're seeing the effects of racial trauma, anxiety, depression."
Meanwhile, Choi said the reporting center is bracing for a new round of attacks when the Wuhan lab investigation comes out later this month.
