Protests and vigils calling for an end to violence against Asian Americans have been witnessed around the United States over the weekend, following shootings last Tuesday at three Atlanta-area spas that killed eight, including six women of Asian descent. In New York City, hundreds marched from Manhattan's Union Square to the borough's Chinatown neighbourhood on Sunday as a sign of solidarity. A similar march from Times Square to Chinatown took place a day earlier. The perpetrator of the Atlanta attacks, Robert Aaron Long, is in custody and has been charged with murder. Atlanta police have not decided yet whether to classify this a hate crime. According to Stop AAPI Hate, a group that runs a centre tracking incidents of hate and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the US, there were close to 3,800 hate incidents against Asian Americans reported in the first full year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is a blot on America, once admired as an immigrant society that celebrates diversity, even as it works on equal opportunity issues. It has not helped that until this January, the US was led for four years by Mr Donald Trump, whose proclivity to refer to the virus as the "China virus" worsened misgivings that arose with a perception that Beijing was not entirely forthcoming with the world when the virus was first reported in Wuhan.