New York, Feb 26 (EFE) .- Concern about racist attacks against citizens of Asian origin is increasing in New York, after a person was stabbed in the back in Chinatown on the night of Thursday to Friday.
According to police sources, a 23-year-old man from Brooklyn was charged with a hate crime after stabbing another 36-year-old man in the back with a large knife.
Although the perpetrator, identified as Salman Muflihi, was not initially considered by officers as a racist act, the police changed the charges filed and explained that he carried out the attack because “he did not like the way the victim looked at him.”
In addition, the police established shortly after that Muflihi, who on Friday was charged with attempted second-degree murder and illegal possession of a weapon, punched another Asian in the head last January.
The victim was taken to the Bellevue hospital, in Manhattan, in critical condition, local media noted.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was concerned this week about the increase in attacks against Asians, noting that the city is intensifying its efforts to confront these types of crimes.
“All the communities have suffered, but there has been a lot of pain especially in the Asian-American community,” Bill de Blasio said at a press conference. “Because in addition to suffering from the coronavirus itself, in addition to losing their loved ones and their businesses, people have had to face horrible discrimination and hatred,” he added.
Last weekend, community activist Tony Herbert, who runs the Advocates Without Borders organization and was a candidate for ombudsman, led a protest in the borough of Queens where he recalled that violence is “at maximum levels.”
Herbert, along with a group of activists, pointed to an incident last week in which a 52-year-old Asian woman was berated and pushed to the ground by an individual while waiting in front of a bakery, the latest in a series of violent events involving racist temptations against this group.
“Violence in New York is at maximum levels and if you are not assaulted in the subway, you are assaulted while you wait to buy cakes,” he said.
According to NYPD data, the city has gone from registering 3 attacks against Asian Americans in 2019 to 29 last year, the vast majority motivated by prejudice related to the covid-19 pandemic, to which former President Donald Trump repeatedly referred like the “Chinese virus”.
In recent weeks, the news of attacks against Asians in the United States, especially against the elderly, have been increasingly frequent, for which civil organizations and prominent figures such as actresses Olivia Munn or Awkwafina have raised their voices in awareness campaigns.
The organization “Stop Asian American and Pacific Islander Hate”, from the beginning of the pandemic until the end of 2020 registered almost 2,800 complaints of “anti-Asian hatred” throughout the country. , 240 of them including a physical attack. EFE
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