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Images of French of Asian descent launch a hashtag campaign called #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus (I’m not a virus) on social media in response to racism against Asians amid the current coronavirus outbreak. (Twitter)

As more cases of the novel coronavirus turn up not only in Asia but also in Europe and North America, including France, Germany, the US, and Canada, xenophobia aimed at Asians is popping up around the world. The fact that the virus originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, in Hubei Province, has aggravated aversion for Chinese, and people from other Asian countries are suffering as well.

A post titled “I got called a [derogatory word for a woman] on the street today” went up on a South Korean online message board on the morning of Jan. 30. “An older man called me a ‘dirty Chinese [expletive].’ A guy who looked like a high schooler got in my face and told me to ‘get lost.’ I really lost it for a moment when a homeless person walking down the street even called me a [derogatory word for a woman],” wrote a woman who’s staying in France.

“Even when I explain I’m Korean, people tell me that all Asians should leave. I’d been afraid this might happen, but experiencing it personally has shown me how hard it is to bear such hatred. It makes me afraid to go to crowded places.”

That’s not the only example of Asians facing hatred since the outbreak of the coronavirus. “I was walking down the street wearing a mask when some guy shouted ‘virus’ and pretended to sneeze,” a South Korean studying in Canada posted on a different online message board.

On France’s BFM TV, a French person of Asian descent said, “When I was coming out of a sports stadium in downtown Paris, a boy made fun of me by shouting, ‘Here comes the coronavirus.’”

A local newspaper in France was accused of racism against Asians after recently printing the expressions “alerte jaune” (yellow alert) and “le péril jaune” (yellow peril) on its front page, referring to the coronavirus. Reuters reported that petitioners asked a school board in Toronto, Canada, on Jan. 28 to keep students whose family had been to China away from schools.

Asians who are living in or visiting foreign countries are calling for such hatred to be stopped. “This hatred affects not only the Chinese community but also all ethnic Asians living in France. Such irrational discrimination is particularly bad on mass transit. Please stop,” an association of Chinese young people in France said in a statement released on Thursday.

French of Asian descent have also launched a hashtag campaign called #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus (I’m not a virus) in which they share their experiences with discrimination on social media.

By Bae Ji-hyun, staff reporter

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