FRSO Joint Nationalities Commission chair Masao Suzuki condemned the thousands of attacks on Asian Americans in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Thousands of incidents of harassment, physical attacks and even attempted murder have been aimed at Asian Americans,” said Suzuki. “This is unacceptable and another way the United States has turned the pandemic into a human made disaster.”

The JNC chair laid the blame at the feet of the Trump administration, saying ,“Trump’s attempts to label the COVID-19 as a ‘Chinese virus’ has tried to cover over his administration’s cuts to pandemic prevention programs and refusal to acknowledge it is a real public health crisis until it was too late to be proactive. Now that more than 12,000 Americans have died, Trump is trying to shift the blame to China.”

“From the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to the incarceration of Japanese Americans into concentration camps during World War II, there is a long history of national oppression of Chinese and other Asian Americans that portrays us as being perpetual foreigners,” said Suzuki.

Suzuki called upon Asian Americans to unite with others who are bearing the heaviest burdens of the pandemic. “African Americans are being hit the hardest in the South and in cities across the country by COVID-19. Workers in transport, food production and other essential jobs have to go to work, often for low pay and without adequate protection. Prisoners and immigration detainees, disproportionately African American, Chicano and Latino, and other oppressed nationalities are being held in dangerous and potentially disastrous conditions.”

While a few prominent Asian Americans, such as former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, attempt to blame the victims, saying that Asian American need to show more American-ness, Suzuki praised those who are publicizing and resisting these attacks. “The pandemic is intensifying national oppression and class antagonisms,” said Suzuki. “We need to fight back.”

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #AsianNationalities #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganizationFRSO