Summary
We’re closing down this live blog now. But this is where things stand:
•Asian American lawmakers have warned the community is in crisis, after a year of thousands of discriminatory attacks in the United States and a mass killing on Tuesday in three Atlanta-area spas.
•The eight victims killed in Tuesday’s attack included seven people of Asian descent, six of them women. “The Asian American community has reached a crisis point that cannot be ignored,” Rep Judy Chu told a hearing on discrimination and attacks against Asian Americans.
•Police said Robert Aaron Long “frequented” two of the Atlanta spas that were attacked. Charles Hampton, deputy chief of Atlanta police, could not confirm if the eight people killed were specifically targeted. “I will not say that, again I would just say that unfortunately they were at that location, I can’t say that he specifically targeted those individuals,” Hampton said.
•The Georgia sheriff’s captain who said Long was “having a really bad day” when he allegedly killed eight people was removed as a spokesperson on the case, according to the WSB-TV news channel. WSB-TV, reported that Capt Jay Baker “will no longer be spokesperson” on the shootings case.
Thanks for reading.
Updated
Georgia sheriff removed from shootings case over comments
The Georgia sheriff’s captain who said Robert Aaron Long was “having a really bad day” when he allegedly killed eight people has been removed as a spokesperson on the case, according to the WSB-TV news channel.
Nicole Carr, a journalist at WSB-TV, reported that Capt Jay Baker “will no longer be spokesperson” on the shootings case. According to Carr, the Cherokee County Sheriff department is also “evaluating what [Baker’s] future at the Sheriff’s Office looks like”.
Baker was widely criticized for his comments about Long, and faced further calls to resign when it emerged he had shared a racist post on Facebook.
Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Baker said investigators had interviewed Long that morning.
“They got that impression that yes, he understood the gravity of it. He was pretty much fed up, and kind of at [the] end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did,” Baker said.
Later on Wednesday BuzzFeed News reported that in 2020, Baker shared an image of T-shirt with a logo that parodied Corona beer and read “Covid 19: imported virus from Chy-na”.
NEW:Confirmed w Cherokee Sheriff that Cpt.Baker will no longer be spokesperson on spa shootings case,they’re evaluating what his future at the Sheriff’s Office looks like and consulting the D.A.’s office to see if they should hand their portion of case to GBI See you at 6 @wsbtv https://t.co/cI1sQHcrRV
— Nicole Carr (@NicoleFCarr) March 18, 2021
Charles Hampton, deputy chief of Atlanta police, said officers are “working diligently to ascertain all the facts” in the spa shootings.
“We had four Asian females that were killed, and so we are looking at everything to make sure we discover and determine what the motive of our homicides were,” Hampton said during a press conference.
Asked if the shootings were racially motivated, Hampton said:
“I don’t have a position. Like I said, I will only comment about our investigation,” Hampton said.
Again, we’re not prepared to talk a lot about what has been said because, again, we’re not trying to try the case in public. [...] We try to remember that eight families are impacted by this.”
Suspect 'frequented' two of the spas attacked
The man charged with killing eight people at Atlanta-area spas frequented at least two of the spas targeted, police said.
In a press conference Charles Hampton, deputy chief of Atlanta police, said Robert Aaron Long “did frequent those two locations within Atlanta”.
Three people, all Asian women, were killed at Atlanta’s Gold Spa on Tuesday, one more person was killed at Aromatherapy Spa, across the street. Four more were killed at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor, on the outskirts of the city.
Asked if Long had targeted the individuals killed specifically, Hampton said:
“I will not say that, again I would just say that unfortunately they were at that location, I can’t say that he specifically targeted those individuals.”
Hampton added of Long:
“I’m not sure about any mental illness. All we do know is that he did purchase the gun the day of the incident.”
ATLANTA POLICE SPEAK TO THE PRESS: Officials from the Atlanta Police Dept are holding a press conference to discuss their ongoing investigations into the fatal shootings of eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, at Atlanta-area spas.
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 18, 2021
https://t.co/QUj4oP71Oc
Updated
Family mourns shooting victim Paul Andre Michels
Michels, a handyman at Youngs Asian Massage, was among the eight killed.
John Michels, his 52-year-old brother, told the Guardian that Paul was a “very good man” who would help out anyone. “He was just a regular guy, very good-hearted, very soft-natured,” he said.
Paul, 54, was one of nine siblings, and the family grew up in Detroit, Michigan. “Even though we’re not biological twins, we were basically twins. We hung out and did endless everything together,” John Michels said, recalling their youth. “Our dad would take us to the lake every Sunday in the summertime.”
Though it is not yet known whether any of the victims of Tuesday’s shooting provided sexual services at their workplaces, the gunman told police that the spas he opened fire on represented a “temptation he wanted to eliminate”, suggesting that he at least believed that they did.
Reporting for the Guardian, Marie Solis spoke to advocates who said this reveals the way racism, sexism and anti-sex-work sentiment work together to produce anti-Asian violence:
“Even if they were providing non-sexual massages, this ends up being a sex work issue,” said Esther K, a co-director of Red Canary Song, a grassroots Chinese massage parlor worker coalition. “The women are de facto being seen as sex workers and being scapegoated as such.
“Removing the anti-sex-work component really removes the crux of what this specific kind of racism is about: the fetishization of Asian women’s bodies, the objectification of their bodies and the assumption that Asian women are obviously going to be providing sexual services at massage parlors,” she continued. “The conflation of massage parlors and sex workers without any nuance is very specific to anti-Asian racism against Asian women.”
Facebook is removing content celebrating the recent shootings in Atlanta that targeted Asian women, designating the attack as “a violating event” - one that has additional regulations on the platform.
Content that praises, supports, or represents the shooting or the suspect will be removed, Facebook told the Verge. It did not give any additional details about how much content has been actioned.
This is not the first time Facebook has made such a designation. It did the same in the January insurrection and in the aftermath of a shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020.
Both of those instances made clear how wide the gap can be between Facebook’s stated policies and its ability to enforce them. The platform struggled to remove posts glorifying or supporting the insurrection following the January 6 violence. Both of those violent events were planned extensively in Facebook events and groups.
Friends mourn shooting victim Delaina Ashley Yaun
Yaun, a 33-year-old mother of two, was one of the eight people to die in the shooting. A friend of Yaun’s described to the Guardian how Yaun had recently helped her family.
In a Facebook message, Rose Luce said after she lost her job due to the pandemic, Yaun “took me and my boyfriend along with my dog into her already full home because she cared about me”.
Luce said that while living with Yaun, she saw first-hand what a great mother, wife and daughter she was.
“Losing her will permanently affect this family and home. I’ve never seen such love in a family the way I see the love Delaina had for hers,” Luce said.
“Every day she would come home from work and hug her mother and kiss her baby girl with a giant smile on her face. She adored that beautiful baby girl with every part of her heart.”
Updated
At CNN, reporter Priya Krishnakumar has a big read on why poor, inconsistent data collection makes it impossible to know the scope of violence and harassment against Asians in the US.
The problems are numerous and include: the way data collection treats Asians as a monolith; victims of hate crimes are unlikely to report to the police; and law enforcement agencies aren’t required to submit hate crime data to the FBI. This is also why groups like Stop AAPI Hate have stepped in to do the count. More from the piece:
Not all communities have the same resources as New York or Los Angeles, creating a lopsided view of where crimes occur. Larger cities are more likely to have advocacy groups or more robust resources for victims who are hesitant to report to police.
“People are more likely to share with a community group than with law enforcement. So how do you handle that when there may not be community groups throughout the country?” said Aarti Kohli, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
“The government is not actually set up with alternatives to law enforcement, which is what we really need to get at systemic racism in this country,” Kohli said.
In smaller cities or rural areas, that lack of resources can create a challenging feedback loop: When hate crimes are underreported, it becomes harder for advocates and civic leaders to make the case for more resources to address hate crimes.
Here’s a summary of today’s developments so far:
- Asian American lawmakers warned the community is in crisis after a year of thousands of discriminatory attacks in the United States and a mass killing on Tuesday in three Atlanta-area spas.
- The eight victims slayed in the attack included seven people of Asian descent and six women.
- “The Asian American community has reached a crisis point that cannot be ignored,” Representative Judy Chu told a House hearing on discrimination and attacks against Asian Americans.
- The FBI and other police forces are facing criticism for levels of reporting of hate crimes that remain abysmally low, despite several attempts by Congress to highlight the outrages.
- Joe Biden and Kamala Harris expanded a previously planned trip to visit health officials in Atlanta on Friday to include meetings with Asian American community leaders.
- Biden ordered US flags flown at half-staff as a show of respect for the victims and their families.
- Rallies unfolded across the country to protest acts of hatred against Asian Americans and express solidarity for victims of hate crimes, verbal abuse and other attacks.
Updated
Trevor Noah on the Atlanta shootings and anti-Asian racism: ‘We could see this coming’
On Wednesday, late-night hosts addressed the previous day’s killing of eight people, including six Asian women, by a 21-year-old white man who targeted Asian spas in Atlanta. “This is truly horrifying,” said Trevor Noah, a tragedy made even more painful by the police’s hesitance to say the crime was motivated by racism.
The Atlanta shooter blamed a specific race of people for his problems, and then murdered them because of it. If that’s not racism, then the word has no meaning. pic.twitter.com/4gIKN5hM28
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) March 18, 2021
According to Georgia police, the shooter blamed his actions on “sex addiction” and was looking to take out “temptations”, an excuse for which Noah had zero patience. “Fuck you, man. You killed six Asian people. Specifically, you went there,” he said. “Your murders speak louder than your words.”
Read further:
More technical difficulties at the House hearing. Delay number three now while they work it out.
Representative Lieu, the California Democrat, now pops into the hearing (virtually) to reprimand Republicans for trying to change the subject and to decry the use of racist language particularly in reference to the pandemic.
“This hearing is about Americans of Asian descent,” not about a foreign county, Lieu says.
“Please, stop using racist terms likes ‘Kung flu’ or ‘Wuhan virus’,” he says. “Whatever political points you think you are scoring... you are harming Americans of Asian descent. So please stop doing that.”
Updated
Representative Ted Lieu of California responds to his Republican colleague from Texas, Chip Roy, who used today’s hearing about discrimination and violence against Asian Americans to attack the Chinese communist party:
Dear Rep @chiproytx: Unlike you, I served on active duty in the US military. I’m aware of who the bad guys are. But today’s hearing is about anti-Asian violence in the US. Americans who happen to be of Asian descent are being targeted. Get the difference?#StopAsianHateCrimes https://t.co/SnovDL6BP8
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) March 18, 2021
Biden orders US flags at the White House, public buildings and military facilities to be flown at half-staff “as a mark of respect for victims of the senseless acts of violence”:
President Biden issues a proclamation on the killings in Atlanta, ordering flags to half-staff until March 22. pic.twitter.com/HnZbI6lO1h
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) March 18, 2021
Here is video of Representative Meng’s reaction to a Republican colleague’s attempt to hijack a hearing about discrimination and violence against Asian Americans to attack the Chinese communist party:
“We will not let you take our voice away from us,” she says.
Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) says Republicans "can talk about issues with any other country that you want — but you don't have to do it by putting a bullseye on the back of Asian Americans across this country, on our grandparents, on our kids" https://t.co/BdhFoLZitq pic.twitter.com/mBDXPDNNyS
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 18, 2021
Wow. @RepGraceMeng grew visibly angry and teared up in telling Roy he is free to talk about "any other country you want, but you don't have to do it by putting a bull's eye on back of Asian Americans in this country. ...We will not let you take our voice away from us." https://t.co/l2ew1iyFd5
— David Nakamura (@DavidNakamura) March 18, 2021
The House hearing again succumbs to an IT glitch. Delay.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Tia Mitchell captures a moment of dramatic testimony from Representative Grace Meng, Democrat of New York, who responded to an earlier statement by Republican Chip Roy of Texas, who delivered a non sequitur diatribe about lynchings in Texas and “the bad guys” in the Chinese communist party.
Meng says the focus of the hearing will absolutely not be conceded. “We will be heard!” she says.
Rep. Grace Meng, of NY, got emotional responding to Rep. Roy's comments earlier. She said it is OK to criticize other nations but "you don’t have to do it by putting a bulls-eye on the backs of Asian Americans across this country, on our grandparents & on our kids.”
— Tia Mitchell, AJC’s Washington Correspondent (@ajconwashington) March 18, 2021
Biden and Harris to meet Asian American community leaders in Atlanta
The president and vice-president are heading to Atlanta on Friday, NBC News reports.
NBC News: President Biden and Vice President Harris will meet with Asian-American community leaders in Atlanta, Georgia tomorrow. @MSNBC
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 18, 2021
Updated
US senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia calls for stories to amplify the humanity of the victims of the Atlanta spa killings:
Warnock added that he was “more interested in hearing the stories of the victims” killed in the attacks Tuesday on Young’s Asian Massage Parlor, Aromatherapy Spa and Gold Spa. “That’s really what we ought to be amplifying, their humanity,” he said. https://t.co/4LleKRNxqx pic.twitter.com/Hhh6mW1vlm
— POLITICO (@politico) March 18, 2021
'Asian American community has reached a crisis point': Representative Chu
Representative Judy Chu, Democrat of California, the chair of the Asian Pacific American caucus, is next.
“It is with a heavy heart that we are here today,” she says, saying the community is “shocked and heartbroken.”
“His targets were no accident, and what we know is that these crimes were coming.
“The Asian American community has reached a crisis point that cannot be ignored,” she says.
There have been nearly 3,800 anti-Asian American hate crimes and incidents in the last year alone, she says. She lays part of the blame on Donald Trump for using “racist terminology” to describe the pandemic and “directing more hatred and blame at the Asian American community.”
“Even though Donald Trump is no longer president, I believe the latest round” of attacks are the acme of Trump’s rhetoric, she says.
Chu announces a national day to address anti-Asian discrimination and violence on Friday 26 March.
The House hearing has resumed. Representative Doris Matsui, Democrat from California, is speaking. She was born in a Japanese internment camp in Arizona in 1944. Her parents tried to protect her from the experience after the fact by not talking about it, she says, but she wants her grandchildren and all Americans to remember the “regular folks who were betrayed by their country.”
She says “we’ve seen the consequences” from the “fear of the other.” “It took decades” for the country to begin to face the stain of internment, she says. “Today’s hearing is another reminder that our country is capable of growth,” she says.
Here’s a video clip from chair Steve Cohen’s opening statement at the House hearing on discrimination and violence against Asian Americans:
Rep. Steve Cohen: "For many Asian Americans Tuesday's shocking events felt like the inevitable culmination of a year in which there were nearly 3,800 reported events of anti-Asian hate." https://t.co/y9HYimc0OC pic.twitter.com/NHicNaGlho
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 18, 2021
The hearing appears to be about to resume after technical difficulties.
The House committee hearing on discrimination and violence against Asian Americans has hit a serious technical glitch – they’re using a video chat service for members to attend virtually – and the hearing is halted.
“If you can hear us, wave your arms,” chair Cohen says.
“They can’t hear us,” he concludes.
The state attorney general of Connecticut tells CNN that Asian Americans are “largely invisible in the discussion about racism” in the United States today:
”That’s what it means to be an Asian-American in this country today — largely invisible in the discussion about racism.” — Connecticut Attorney General @AGWilliamTong to me following 8 murders in Georgia. pic.twitter.com/fWDQWT6zcx
— Poppy Harlow (@PoppyHarlowCNN) March 18, 2021
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties is holding a hearing on discrimination and violence against Asian Americans.
Chair Steve Cohen of Tennessee, a Democrat, has catalogued recent incidents of violence against Asian Americans.
Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, also a Democrat, alludes to the Atlanta spa attacks and says “The effect on the Asian American community has been profound”.
He plays a news reel summarizing a series of attacks on Asian Americans in New York.
Here’s a live stream:
Updated
What we know so far about the Atlanta spa shootings
A gunman killed eight people in three separate shootings in Atlanta, Georgia, massage parlors. Here’s what we know about the incidents so far:
Eight people were killed in three separate shootings on Tuesday evening at massage parlors in and around the city.
- The majority of victims killed were women of Asian descent. Two of those killed were white. Police said seven of those killed were women.
- Robert Aaron Long, 21, faces eight counts of murder, and one count of assault, for the shootings in Atlanta and Acworth, about 30 miles north-west in Cherokee county. His arraignment is expected on Thursday.
- The killing spree started around 5pm, when Long allegedly shot five people at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor, in Acworth. Two victims died at the scene, and another two died at hospital, authorities said.
- Around 5.50pm, police responded to a report of a robbery in progress at Gold Spa in north-east Atlanta. When police arrived, they found three women who were killed by apparent gunshot wounds.
- While police were at Gold Spa, they received calls about shots at Aromatherapy Spa, across the street. At Aromatherapy Spa, they found the body of another woman.
- The Cherokee county sheriff’s office revealed the identities of the four victims killed at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor. They are 33-year-old Delaina Ashley Yaun, 54-year-old Paul Andre Michels, 49-year-old Xiaojie Yan, and 44-year-old Daoyou Feng.
- A spokesperson for the Cherokee county sheriff’s office said it appeared that Xiaojie Yan was the owner of Youngs Asian Massage Parlor.
- Yaun worked at an Acworth location of Waffle House, a US diner chain. In a statement about her death, the company described her as a “well-liked server” who was trained as a grill operator.
Read further:
Jeremy Lin on Atlanta spa shootings: ‘I worry I encourage hate by speaking out’
Jeremy Lin spoke out on Wednesday against the rise in targeted attacks against Asian Americans in the wake of shootings at three Atlanta-area massage parlors that left eight people dead, the majority of them women of Asian descent, leading to fears the killer had a racial motive.
Lin, who plays for the Golden State Warriors’ G League affiliate, the Santa Cruz Warriors, was speaking in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night. The 32-year-old point guard made headlines in February after revealing that he was called “coronavirus” on the court without saying when or where it happened.
The first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA, Lin said the violence in Georgia was the natural progression of an escalating trend he’s observed over the past year.
“It feels very different,” Lin said. “Growing up it was always something that might be a little bit more subtle or verbal, but I think what we’re seeing right now is a lot of physical, actual violence, lives being taken, a lot of Asian Americans who are looking over their shoulders when they go outside, when they go to the grocery store. And we’re starting to slowly see more and more reporting of what is going on, but this is something that is definitely hitting different.”
Read further:
Updated
San Francisco’s Chinatown reckons with Atlanta attacks: ‘I don’t feel safe anywhere’
The morning after the Atlanta spa shootings, a man struck an elderly Asian woman on San Francisco’s Market Street in a seemingly unprovoked attack.
Over the past few months, the Asian American community in the San Francisco Bay Area has been inundated with reports of attacks like these – from robberies to burglaries to deadly assaults.
So when eight people, six of whom were Asian women, were killed after a shooter sought out three Asian-owned businesses in the Atlanta area, many in the Bay Area Asian American community were all too familiar with the pain and fear that followed.
“It’s so stupid,” Betty Louie, the adviser to the San Francisco Chinatown Merchants Association, said. “I’m able-bodied. I’m OK, I’m safe. But I’m afraid to go and do my afternoon walk. I don’t feel safe anywhere at this point.”
Read further:
Hello and welcome to our unfolding coverage of the mass killing Tuesday night of eight people including six women of Asian descent in three massage parlors in the Atlanta area.
A Georgia sheriff’s captain has faced widespread criticism for appearing to characterise the actions of Robert Aaron Long, the 21-year-old charged in the killings, as “having a really bad day”.
Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Capt Jay Baker of the Cherokee county sheriff’s office said investigators had interviewed Long that morning.
“They got that impression that yes, he understood the gravity of it. He was pretty much fed up, and kind of at [the] end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did,” Baker said.
The FBI and other police forces are facing criticism for levels of reporting of hate crimes that remain abysmally low, despite several attempts by Congress to highlight the outrages, reports the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington:
Asian American community leaders expressed dismay on Wednesday, a day after the shootings at three massage parlors, that the discrimination and harassment historically faced by their communities continued to be downplayed.
“It’s taken six Asian American women dying in one day to get people to pay attention to this,” Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) told the Guardian. “Record keeping of hate crimes against Asian Americans is so low because they are not even willing to accept that we are discriminated against and harassed because of our race.”
Though it is not yet known whether any of the victims of Tuesday’s shooting provided sexual services at their workplaces, Long told police that the spas he opened fire on represented a “temptation he wanted to eliminate”, suggesting that he at least believed that they did, writes Marie Solis:
Advocates say this reveals the way racism, sexism, and anti-sex-work sentiment work together to produce anti-Asian violence: no matter what, they say, his crime was ultimately one against sex workers.
“Even if they were providing non-sexual massages, this ends up being a sex work issue,” said Esther K, a co-director of Red Canary Song, a grassroots Chinese massage parlor worker coalition. “The women are de facto being seen as sex workers and being scapegoated as such.
We’ll have the latest as more information comes to light about the victims of the attack, the investigation develops and as a national conversation struggles to coalesce about violence against Asian Americans and US hate crimes.
Updated
