The Marvel film star Gemma Chan has revealed that she is frightened for her family in the UK after a surge in hate crimes against Chinese, Japanese and south-east Asian people.

Speaking to the Observer to help raise awareness for a national #StopAsianHate campaign, Chan said she was “deeply concerned and disturbed” at police figures revealing that, in London alone, attacks on east and south-east Asian people (ESEA) have tripled over the past year.

“Like many others, I worry for family members every time they leave the house or use public transport,” said Chan. “My mum has worked for the NHS for most of her life. She and my dad have been followed and subjected to a number of verbal assaults since the beginning of the pandemic.”...

It was heartbreaking and horrifying—but to many, it wasn’t a surprise.

The news that eight people, six of them Asian-American women, were killed at businesses in the Atlanta area on March 16 came after a year of intense anti-Asian racism in the U.S. On the platforms where news arrives first, and quickly attaches to feelings, emotions were already raw.

“This mass shooter was targeting Asian women and their businesses. This isn’t an isolated incident. There have been 500+ hate crimes targeted at Asian people this year alone,” social media specialist Mark Kim wrote on Twitter. “This Atlanta tragedy lies at an intersection of race, gender, class and the legacy of America’s history of colonization and violence in Asia,” journalist Elise Hu said on the site. “I don’t have the words. I’m just despondent. Protect Asian women, solidarity with sex workers, #StopAsianHate.”...

Community groups supporting Chinese and other East Asian communities in the UK are being trained to support victims of Covid-related racial attacks, after a Chinese lecturer was assaulted last week.

Peng Wang, 37, was brutally attacked by four men while he was jogging near his home in Southampton last Tuesday. He sustained facial injuries and an injury to his elbow in the attack, which took place at around 4.15pm on Vosper Road, Southampton.

The men drove past Mr Wang in a car and shouted abuse at him. When the University of Southampton lecturer shouted back to defend himself, they stopped the car and assaulted him...

Coronavirus made 2020 a difficult year for everyone across the UK, with thousands losing their jobs and loneliness sweeping the nation. But for people of east and southeast Asian (ESEA) descent, it has stirred up the “raging horror” of racism, on top of everything else.

ESEA communities have faced soaring racially-aggravated violence and discrimination during the course of the pandemic, as the virus was inextricably linked to China.

Racist hate crime against people described by the Metropolitan Police as Oriental soared. Between January and June, Met Police recorded a total of 457 race-related crimes against people of “Oriental” ethnicity or who self-defined as Chinese...

Parliament is holding its “first ever” debate dedicated to racism experienced by East Asian people.

Sarah Owen, a Labour MP who represents Luton North, proposed the discussion following a three-fold increase in the number of hate crimes against Chinese people during the pandemic.

Ms Owen, who is British Chinese, claims research shows that a third of images of East and Southeast Asian people in UK media outlets were used to illustrate COVID-19 stories that had nothing to do with East or Southeast Asia...

Hate crime directed at south and east Asian communities has increased by 21% during the coronavirus crisis, ministers have told MPs.

A session of the home affairs select committee on online harm since the onset of the pandemic also heard that incidents of revenge porn – the sharing of private sexual material of another person without their consent either online and offline – had increased.

Susan Williams, the Home Office minister for countering extremism, told the committee that extremism generally had not increased, but there had been a rise in specific types of hate crime.

She said: “I’ve been speaking to our hate crime lead, and there’s been a 21% uptick in hate incidents against the IC4 and IC5 community.”...

(New York) – Governments should take urgent steps to prevent racist and xenophobic violence and discrimination linked to the Covid-19 pandemic while prosecuting racial attacks against Asians and people of Asian descent, Human Rights Watch said today. On May 8, 2020, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that “the pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering” and urged governments to “act now to strengthen the immunity of our societies against the virus of hate.”...

Police have recorded a sharp increase in hate crimes against Chinese people during the coronavirus outbreak, figures show.

The number of offences reported in the first three months of 2020 has almost tripled compared to the same period for 2018 and 2019.

Between January and March, when the Covid-19 pandemic was intensifying within the UK, at least 267 reports of hate crime were made across the UK...