Biden calls for end to 'hate crimes' against Asian Americans amid outcry from rights groups

US President Joe Biden has called for an end to "hate crimes" against Asian Americans following weeks of outcry and warnings from the community and rights groups.

Biden said, “States pitted against one another instead of working with each other. Vicious hate crimes against Asian Americans who have been attacked, harassed, blamed, and scapegoated” over the coronavirus pandemic, which the US claims originated in China.

“They are forced to live in fear for their lives, just walking down streets in America, it’s wrong, and it must stop." Biden said in his first primetime address.

US activists say a new wave of anti-Asian discrimination has been fuelled since the start of the pandemic by talk of the "Chinese virus" from former president Donald Trump and others.

US media reports said anti-Asian hate crimes more than doubled from last year across over a dozen major US cities including New York and Los Angeles.

A study from the Stop AAPI Hate advocacy group also showed more than 2,800 incidents of racism and discrimination targeting Asian-Americans across the United States between March and December last year.

The recent spike in violent attacks targeting Asian Americans prompted the minority group to raise the alarm.

Andrew Yang, who is running for mayor of New York City, warned last week of the rise in violence against the Asian American community, saying many Asian Americans feel "more at risk" and that the increase in anti-Asian violence must be taken "very, very seriously." 

Numerous incidents of hate crime, targeting Asian Americans business owners and elderly Asians, began following Trump's racist rhetoric and repeated rebuke of China and other Asian countries.

Reports of attacks against individuals and business owners in US Chinatowns have also increased in recent week as Biden failed to address the hate crime after assuming office.

In January, a local television station in the Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco showed footage of a young man violently shoving to the ground a man identified as Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, who had been out for a morning walk. He later died.

Ratanapakdee had moved to San Francisco from Thailand four years ago to help his daughter and son-in-law take care of their two sons. 

The attacks quickly reinvigorated simmering outrage and fear over a wave of anti-Asian violence and harassment that community leaders say was spurred earlier in the coronavirus pandemic by the rhetoric of Trump, who insisted on calling the coronavirus “the China virus” or the “Kung Flu.”

Carl Chan, president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, has tallied more than 20 assaults in past weeks in Oakland’s Chinatown in California alone.

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