Anti-Asian hate still nightmare for group

Almost two and a half years after COVID-19 broke out in the United States and despite their efforts to halt anti-Asian hate, people of Chinese and Asian descent in San Francisco say they continue to live in fear.

Since being attacked on a bus and suffering a head injury in April, Amy Li, who lives in San Francisco's Chinatown, said she still sees the offender in her neighborhood almost every day.

"I've reported this case to the police and haven't heard anything," Li said at a public meeting last week. "Every day my son and I live in fear."

Several others in the audience voiced similar concern, including Ethan Li, 12, who also lives in Chinatown. "Sometimes we're scared to go out at night," he said.

The meeting, attended by San Francisco Police Chief William Scott and newly appointed District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, was a response to the demand of activists amid several recent violent attacks on Asian American seniors.

On July 31 a San Francisco woman, 70, was beaten and kicked in the face by four attackers trying to rob her inside her housing complex. The attack was caught on surveillance video and viewed widely on the internet.

Two days later a former San Francisco city commissioner, Greg Chew, also 70, was seriously injured after being attacked on a street near his home. He suffered a shoulder injury and extensive facial bruising and is still in hospital nearly three weeks later.

Chew said his attacker "went after" him not for money, but seemed just gratuitously to target him.

Being "tired of waiting for real-time solutions", Asian community activists held a march on Aug 7, demanding that Scott hold a public meeting on the issue within 10 days.

Since July 31 three elderly Asians have been "senselessly and brutally "attacked, Scott said.

Jenkins reassured the audience that the arrests will send a message to criminals that attacks on Asian Americans will not be tolerated. She took office last month after the recall of her predecessor Chesa Boudin, who was criticized for the way he handled prosecutions involving Asian victims.

Community activists said city officials and media have been largely silent on those attacks and have demanded action.

"We are extremely saddened and outraged by the continued violence and harassment against the Asian American community, including the recent attacks against Asian seniors," the Committee of 100, an organization of Chinese Americans, said.

In California anti-Asian crimes have become a larger portion of the state's hate crimes involving race. The number of hate crimes against Asian Americans rose 177.5 percent from 2020 to 2021, the state's justice department said.

Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition that deals with anti-Asian racism across the US, launched the platform in March 2020 for people to report acts of racial hate, and by March this year it says it had received nearly 11,500 reports of Asians being targeted.