Chinese and East Asian Communities: Racism during Covid-19

Sarah Owen Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Chinese and East Asian communities’ experience of racism during the covid-19 pandemic.

I thank Members for joining this debate, which is the first parliamentary debate to look specifically at racism against the Chinese, East Asians and South-East Asians. I will use those terms throughout my speech, because it is vital to get the language right. Chinese, East Asians and South-East Asians have been subjected to horrific hate crimes, especially recently due to the pandemic. I wish we did not have to have this debate, but it is particularly fitting that this is National Hate Crime Awareness Week. Given the sharp rise in hate crime against British East and South-East Asians and the trebling of racist attacks since the covid pandemic, it is absolutely necessary.

I am proud of my roots and my mixed heritage, both Asian and British. It allows me the best of both worlds but, unfortunately, it also allows me to experience some of the worst. Racism against Chinese and South-East Asians is absolutely nothing new. An undercurrent of anti-Asian racism plagued this country before the pandemic started, but now the lid has been lifted and the far right has wrongly been given legitimacy to air its derision, violence and hatred.

From an early age, it was made clear to me that I was seen as different. Sitting backstage at the age of about seven or eight, waiting to perform in a play set in a Chinese courtroom, the person doing our make-up pointed at me and said, “Make the other kids look like her.” The other children had their hair covered in black tights, their eyes coated in exaggerated black eyeliner and I remember sitting there thinking, “Do I really look like that?” Thirty years later, sadly, we still see examples of yellow face all over western culture, whether it is Ting Tong in “Little Britain”, productions of “Madame Butterfly”, Scarlett Johansson or countless examples on Amazon, which has yet to take down its offensive adverts.

Only in my teens, though, did I feel that my racial identity meant that my safety was threatened, when a student brought a knife into school to stab me with because she did not like it when races mixed. I therefore understand the fear and frustration that many British East and South-East Asians are feeling right now, as racists add another powerful tool to their arsenal: coronavirus. A month ago, police chiefs warned that the far right is using covid-19 as an excuse to attack what the Metropolitan police describe as “oriental people”. We do not have enough time in this debate to unpack what is wrong with that term, but it is 2020, not 1920.

The figures obtained by the organisation End the Virus of Racism showed that there were 261 hate crimes against Asians in April, 323 in May and 395 in June, rising each time as lockdown eased. Those do not include the number of hate crimes that have gone under-reported, so I expect the real figures to be much higher, and they are rising across the board: covid-related racism has increased for the Jewish and Muslim communities as well. Protection Approaches reported that this July saw the highest ever numbers of recorded hate crime against protected groups—40% higher than even after 7/7.

In March, Jonathan Mok, a 23-year-old student from Singapore, was punched and kicked in the face on Oxford Street by a group of men. He heard shouts of “Coronavirus!” and was told, “I don’t want your coronavirus in my country!” British-Chinese filmmaker Lucy Sheen was on her way to rehearsals on a bus, when a white male passenger whispered in her ear—forgive me for the unparliamentary language: “Why don’t you f-off back to China and take your filth with you?” In Hitchin, just down the road from my constituency, a takeaway owner was spat at and repeatedly asked if he had coronavirus. In Luton, people have been shouted at from cars. One woman wrote to me to say that she no longer feels safe, and walks about with her mask on and a hood up to cover her face.

That is all without looking at the cesspit of social media. During the pandemic, blatant racism and conspiracy theories have been allowed to spread, unchecked and unaccountable. I report racist videos I am sent of people eating live animals or claiming that I am some part of a global conspiracy, but it is exhausting and the onus is on the wrong person. I hope that the Government will address that in the forthcoming online harms Bill. Social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook should be held responsible for what is published on their sites.

Coronavirus has been given the face of a Chinese Asian person. This sort of racism punches up as well as it punches down. Asians are equally dehumanised, to the extent that we are all the same and all eat live animals, as well as somehow being part of a global conspiracy. The mainstream media have added fuel to the fire. The petition started by the fantastic Viv Yau, Mai-anh Peterson, Amy Phung, Charley Wong and Karlie Wu called for media outlets to stop using East and South-East Asian-related imagery when discussing covid-19. Their work has revealed that some 33% of images used to report covid-19 in the British media have used the image of someone who looks like me, completely unnecessarily and unrelated to the story. The problem has been compounded by our under-representation in the UK media, so the negative coverage has no balance by positive representation.

I am grateful to the Minister for Digital and Culture, the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), for her recent meeting with us to find a way forward on the Government’s own advertising around covid-19. But political leadership, standing up for and standing alongside British East Asians and South-East Asians has been virtually non-existent, and at its worst it has incited further hatred.

Donald Trump this week called covid-19 the “China plague”. We have seen Tory Ministers sharing covid-19 jokes with caricatures of a person in a Chinese pointy hat, bucked teeth and slanting eyes, yet this was not addressed by the party. A Tory council leader said in a meeting that this was all because someone was eating undercooked bat soup in China. Again, that was not addressed by the party.

A couple of weeks ago, two MPs sat in the same room as me and referred to the Chinese—I will quote this unparliamentary language—as “those evil bastards”, and “oh, you know how they look.” They were rightly discussing the awful human rights abuses being carried out by the Chinese state, but this is an othering of an entire ethnicity, which should have no place in society, let alone this House. We need to lead by example. We should absolutely criticise the Chinese state for its appalling abuses against the Uyghur people and actions in Hong Kong, but we need to find a way that does not fuel racism or make Chinese-British East Asians even more vulnerable or fair game to racists. I believe that we can and must do better.

First, we need a clear statement from the Minister that she condemns anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism. It is a basic ask but it is a start, and something that we have yet to hear officially. Secondly, our community must be supported to tackle this unprecedented rise in hate crime. We need targeted support for anti-racism organisations working with the British East and South-East Asian communities. Thirdly, the Government need to work with media outlets to stop the lazy overuse of East Asian imagery in their reporting of covid-19, especially when it bears no relation to the story, and to hold social media companies to account when it comes to ridding their sites of racism and conspiracy theories. Fourthly, include our community in the conversation—give us a seat at the table. Whether it is about financial support, health or messaging on covid-19, the black, Asian and minority ethnic community has been left out of the conversation altogether.

Lastly, I ask the Minister not just to tell us that she is grateful for our contributions, our culture, our skills, our healthcare workers and our businesses. Please act on it. Act on it and let us end the virus of racism for good.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Owen]

Please forgive me, Mrs Cummins; I should have said that it is a great honour to be serving under your chairmanship. I did not realise it was your first day in the Chair, so thank you.

I will start by picking up on some of the Minister’s comments. First, I am grateful to hear her condemnation of hate crimes and racism against Chinese, East Asian and South-East Asian communities, and I know that the community will be really glad to hear it. As I said in my speech, it is a low bar just to ask for condemnation of racism, but it is a start, and I am grateful to the Minister for it. She was absolutely right to mention Chinese businesses: for many of these businesses, the pain occurred well before lockdown, well before other businesses started to see their profits decline and started having to lay off staff. That pain is continuing, and we need to do serious amounts of work to ensure that community, and that business community, is supported throughout this pandemic like so many others should be.

Picking up on the Minister’s second point about the online harms Bill, I am heartened by that Bill, because we have heard countless examples of why it is absolutely necessary. I said that social media is a cesspit; it genuinely is, and it needs cleaning up. One area that I would like the Government to concentrate on and look into through the online harms Bill is the comments sections of news outlets, which I know is an area that the Government have been resistant to include in that Bill’s regulations.

The Minister started by saying that this is a vital debate. It is a vital debate, and I am really grateful that hon. Friends have come here to represent their communities and provide support, but the Minister is here because she has to be. Where are her colleagues? There are six seats empty on her side; not a single Conservative, not a single Government Member, decided to turn up. I know that this is Westminster Hall and it is supposed to be less political, but what message does that send to our communities? It sends a damning message.

I wanted to pick up on some of the points that my hon. Friends have raised, because they are important to solving this problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) spoke eloquently and passionately about the history. The Minister talked about our integration: it started in Liverpool, Riverside, the home of one of the oldest ethnic communities in this country. She also spoke about the importance of education about that history; I do not know how many people really understand or fully know the damage that was caused by those forced deportations of Chinese sailors, ripping the hearts out of families and entire generations. Having a helpline is fantastic, and it should be celebrated and supported, but again, the community is having to step up when the state has stepped back.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) was absolutely right to speak about the pain our community faces when it comes to mental health. We have all found this period really difficult, with loneliness, losses of earnings and of loved ones, and being separated, but add to that being blamed and being scared to go out of the front door. It is not just hate crime that our community has suffered: thousands of healthcare workers have come from China and all over South-East and East Asia, and those workers are the very people who we stood on our doorsteps and clapped for, yet we cannot say that we are going to protect them. More Filipino nurses, healthcare workers and carers have died in this country than in the Philippines during the pandemic.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins).

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).