Chenta Tsai took advantage of the spotlight at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Madrid to undress her shirt and denounce the proliferation of cases of anti-Asian racism.
On his bare chest, this Taiwanese who introduces himself as @ Putochinomaricón on Instagram, wrote “I am not a virus” – “I am not a virus” in the English translation – and paraded before dozens of journalists.
The phrase is one of the most popular hashtags of the moment – it is being used in several languages - and aims to denounce the prejudice to which the Asian community is being targeted.
The online protests were heard at a time when several countries – such as Russia and the United States – decided to ban the entry of Chinese citizens or those from the Hubei region, the epicenter of the outbreak of the new coronavirus epidemic, even after the World Health Organization (WHO) is against these restrictions, for considering them “exaggerated”, “unnecessary” and “unsubstantiated” from a scientific point of view.
Looking for a scapegoat?
The Jew, the wizard, the prostitute, the hunchback, the gay, among others, are part of the long list of “culprits” in the history of each epidemic and Asians fear to be the scapegoat this time. “It is enough to have your eyes a little slit … I see how people look at me when I go out to the streets with my Tibetan boyfriend”, complains Mei Ka, a Japanese woman living in Belgium, on the page of the anti-racist website Asia 2.0 on Facebook.
The hashtag is not new #IAmNotAVirus. It was used by African Americans in the United States in 2014, after the death of a Liberian infected with Ebola in that country. “It reveals a common experience lived by populations stigmatized in this type of situation,” the creator of hashtag in France, asking not to be identified.
The phenomenon is not limited to the western world. A few days ago, in Kazakhstan, two Chinese headed for Nur-Sultan were pulled from a train to be examined by doctors dressed in special suits. But they had no symptoms or signs of infection with the new coronavirus (2019 n-CoV). Shortly afterwards, the local hospital in Chu (south) declared that they were both “completely healthy”.
In Kyrgyzstan, Mr Kamchybek Joldoshbayev asked his compatriots last Wednesday to “avoid contact” with any Chinese citizen and asked the authorities to “take action” in the big Bishkek bazaars. Many traders are Chinese.
– Ancestral fears –
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