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In a tweet on March 20, 2020, US President Donald Trump referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus”, an appellation carrying an undertone of overt racism and derision against a particular community.
The conservative media in the United States had also repeatedly referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” in a gross violation of the WHO’s directives against naming any infectious disease based on its place of origin or the ethnic population among whom it developed. As a part of the WHO’s consistent efforts since 2015 to oust the stigma associated with naming diseases based on geographic locations, it had officially instructed scientists, national authorities and the media to not refer to infectious diseases in a way that fuels communal hatred or xenophobia in general. The onus of this responsibility lies chiefly on the person who first reports on a newly-identified disease. It is essential that he or she uses an appropriate name that is scientifically sound and socially appropriate.
Even though the WHO has zeroed in on the generic name, COVID-19 for the virus leading to the global pandemic, it hasn’t been able to thwart the racist connotations people all over the world are heaping on the disease.
South and South-East Asians are being targeted around the irrational notion that their ethnic origin is a potential risk for them being carriers of the virus themselves. Multiple incidents of racial abuse and discrimination have occurred around India based on this irrational fear.
A woman from Manipur who is an M.Phil research scholar at Delhi University has alleged that a man on a two-wheeler spat on her and called her “corona” while she was on her way to buy groceries. The incident took place on Sunday around 10 pm in Vijay Nagar. Lawyer and social activist Alana Golmei shared photos of the woman on Twitter, and the Delhi Police has filed a complaint against the man under Section 509 (outraging modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code.
Unfortunately, this has not been a solitary incident. A group of students from Nagaland who had come to Kolkata for industrial training were threatened and evicted from their accommodation on March 23rd.
Another video on social media shows a group of women from the northeast crying as the housing society they lived in tried to forcefully evict them and blamed them for “bringing coronavirus in India”. This is probably a video from Gujarat as per the #hashtag given by the woman who posted the video on Twitter. Political activist Angellica Aribam has also been at the receiving end of endless lewd messages and racist slurs on social media, as seen in her Twitter updates.
A picture posted by Times Now Senior Correspondent Mayukh Ranjan Ghosh on Twiiter shows a Kolkata-based singer with a Chinese ancestry wearing a T-shirt saying “I am not coronavirus, I was born in Kolkata and I never visited China.” His name is Francis Lepcha. He was born into one of the 2nd generation Indo-Chinese families and is also part-Sikkimese. He started his musical journey in 1997 by joining a then popular rock band named Trishul in Kolkata as their lead singer. This tweet had unfortunately invited absolutely base, xenophobic comments, like “Maybe it is time to accept that he is not part of India and go back (sic) to Sikkim and seek a separate nation of Sikkim- separate from India…”
Born to a Japanese mother and an Odia father, rapper Samir Rishu Mohanty, aka Big Deal, with his Mongoloid features did not quite look Odia. In an interview with Homegrown, he recalls having been at the receiving end of endless racial discrimination since childhood. He remembers his life as a college student in Bangalore, where he frequently met with derogatory remarks like “chinky” and “momo”. He says that racial discrimination is not a sudden occurrence in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, but has been endemic to the country since ages.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has issued a statement on Monday saying, “There have been cases where people of Northeast including athletes have been harassed by linking them to Covid-19. This is racially discriminatory. It’s requested that all law enforcing agencies in states and UT may sensitise to take appropriate action in these cases.”
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