After the last 12 months of pushing hate speech and scapegoating the Asian American for the COVID pandemic, the cold massacre of 8 people was a rude wake-up call to all Americans this week.
I really could never understand American politics under the orange moron which had aimed to divide to encourage racist rhetoric to achieve political gains at all expense. Where were the adults in the room? Didn’t everyone realized that the country was made up of and built by immigrants for hundreds of years? Only the native Indians can claim to be the true indigenous people of America and yet they are regularly discriminated against too.
Calling people names via Twitter and belittling other races became the norm for a country that used to welcome immigrants with open arms. It was so sad for an outsider like me to see a country degenerate into a 3rd world country spurting xenophobia like it is perfectly OK to spit on others that do not look like you.
Thank goodness Biden is now in charge, but the damage has already been done. Many of the same idiots that supported the orange one are still around trying to cripple minority voter rights and continue to encourage lies and conspiracies. When is Fake News and Alternate Reality going to end?
This week has been a wake-up call to all Asian American to stand up to say that enough is enough, that they will not stand for more BS anymore. #BLM was a movement that started last year which was also long overdue after so many years of racial undertones. Dr King’s message more than 50 years ago seems to sound like it was just yesterday, that nothing had changed at all.
In a diverse culture like the US where the white population is feeling diminished, are they lashing out in defence? Contrast that with the UK, where after hundreds of years of colonization, its population is now filled with Asians of all colours. Just turn on the TV and you will see a big representation of them as broadcasters and news presenters. Even the politicians are already multi-generation British Asians.
This is a unique Western world situation where Asians have migrated over from the East to more developed countries for many many years. We do not see this today in Asian countries except perhaps only in S’pore with its multi-racial population. Most Asian countries still have a largely homogeneous majority population with similar characteristics, like Japan, China and Indonesia.
I hope that this recent incident would make Americans question themselves more and temper down on their superiority complex, to listen to the world instead of continuing their “We are the best!” attitude. This looks like a pipe dream after this week’s first US-China summit in Alaska, where a pissed off China told the Americans that they are the champions of cyberattacks. Even after their own intelligence report this week that contradicted the previous administration’s accusation of China’s meddling in the 2020 elections, they still had the cheek to try to talk down to China. No apologies required because we just need to move on??
Bill Maher said it best in his Real-Time episode last week. America has zero high-speed railways while the rest of the world like Europe and China has them. It has not built a new airport in years. Infrastructure is so bad. Trillions of dollars have instead been spent on wars and military equipment to influence and destroy/meddle in the internal affairs of many countries. With BLM and the 06 Jan Capitol riots, it should try to resolve its own internal problems first, rather than try to teach the world the “right” way to do things. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black…
Asian Americans are made up of many cultures and have been silent on racism for years as they preferred to just lay low and try to realize the American dream. The last 12 months had made them wake up to shout that enough is enough. They have to stay united and make their voices heard. Silence is no more an option as hate crimes had increased by 150% to more than 3,800 in the last one year after the orange one used disparaging terms like the China virus and Kung-Flu to target their ethnicity. That has given rise to more unsolicited and unprovoked violence especially against elderly Asians. #StopAsianHate is the new rally call now.
Biden had within the last 48 hours reached out to this affected group and condemned the racial violence experienced by Asian Americans. At least for now, they finally feel that their rally calls have been heard at the highest level of government. Things need to change now for the better, just like BLM. America needs to do what is right as it has been overdue for too long.
Meanwhile, I dread what is developing on the other side of the world in Myanmar. The protestors are faced with a well equipped military force that is not afraid to use their guns on peaceful protestors. More than 200+ had died since the military coup began on 01 Feb. Daily internet blackouts at night has been happening as the military tries its strong-arm tactics to break the will of the protestors into submission. But it is not working.
Taking a page from the HK protests in 2019, the protestors have escalated the confrontation and notch the tension up another level. They blame China for not willing to step in to condemn the military coup. They believe that China wants a helpful friend in Myanmar to target its rich natural resources and to access the Indian Ocean via landlocked Central Western China. Just over the last weekend, the protestors attacked 32 Chinese factories in Yangon as a way to show their anger. When China requested the military to protect their onshore assets, the military responded with a shoot to kill action and over 50 protestors were killed in those 2 days alone.
The HK protest lasted for almost 6 months until the pandemic stopped it. China took another 6 months to start cracking down on the perpetrators. Now they are also adding “patriot” clauses into the election requirements to stop the Independence movement.
Myanmar will reach its 2nd month anniversary of the coup soon. More bloodshed is expected as a younger generation who had not seen the military’s last violent crackdown in 1988-90 where more than 3,500 were supposedly killed are emboldened to fight on. With the country opening up in 2011 after 50 years of reclusive secret police Gestapo ruling, they have no historical perspective of what had happened before.
Some of my colleagues now in their late forties did live through those 1988-90 years as teenagers then. They cried when 01 Feb happened, having had to relive the 20+ years of lost youth again. They questioned about returning to the past again with screams of anguish. Having gotten to know the country for more than 7 years, my empathy and prayers go out to them. There was so much hope and appreciation of what the future might have been, now crushed violently by the actions of a few for the rest of the 55 million population.
The Civil Disobedience Movement has crippled the whole economy. Food prices are rising and all onshore banks have stopped functioning. This has also affected our microfinance business to farmers as we fear for the safety of employers and branches are unable to open. More people are now out of work and looking to escape the frequent violence of the military crackdown.
I am at a loss for words this week for the 2 things that had happened above. Feeling so helpless as an outsider watching in. Relating to the pain that they are going through but yet wondering if the distance away from them has also numbed my emotion and hardened my heart a little. I can only continue to pray for them silently.
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