(CNN)Robert Peterson struggled for months to stop thinking about the day his mother and seven other people, mostly Asians, were shot and killed at Atlanta-area spas last year.
He has found solace in living at his mother Yong Ae Yue’s home in Norcross, Georgia and remembering the many nights they played poker together, but Peterson says he mustn’t let others forget that his Family and the Asian The American community views the March 16, 2021 killings as a hate crime.
The shooter may not have uttered racial slurs aloud during the killing spree, but his actions “are the proxy for his misogyny, his racism,” said Peterson, 39. Ignoring that racial aspect and the long-standing objectification of Asian women has the trauma of losing his mother only amplified and fueled his fight for justice, he added.
Rising anti-Asian sentiment in the US since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic escalated into mass shootings and forced a debate about racism towards Asians in the US.
A year later, not much has changed in America, say advocates, survivors of the violence and their families. The alleged shooter in the Atlanta attacks has not been charged with hate crimes in state or federal court, anti-Asian racism continues to be reported, and challenges remain to prove prejudice against the Asian-American community.
“We see swastikas or Nazi symbols and salutes. There is not something so unifying in the Asian American community that everyone understands as something designed to intimidate or hurt the AAPI community,” Byung “BJay” Pak, a former U.S. Attorney in Atlanta, told the Peterson represents.
First test of hate crime law in Georgia
Yue, 63, and the other seven victims, Daoyou Feng, 44; Paul Michels, 54; Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49; Delaina Yaun, 33; Suncha Kim, 69; Bald Chung Park, 74; and Hyun Jung Grant, 51, were killed at three Atlanta-area spas.
Robert Aaron Long, the then 21-year-old suspect in the shooting, told authorities he was distraught by what he described as a sex addiction. His allegation sparked debate about the motive behind the attack, as well as numerous calls to support its classification as a hate crime, a trend that continues to this day.
“We have to tell the whole truth and reckon with why they are not here with us today: systemic racism, white supremacy, gender-based violence, the lingering effects of war, both here and in Asia,” Phi Nguyen said, the executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta on the victims during a memorial service Saturday in Brookhaven, a suburb of Atlanta.
Since the shooting, Long has pleaded guilty to four of the Cherokee County murders and was sentenced to life in prison. But he still faces 19 additional indictments in nearby Fulton County, where prosecutors have said they will pursue the death penalty for hate crimes targeting the sex and race of victims. The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but a pretrial hearing in Long’s case is scheduled for April 19.
The case is expected to be the first test of hate crimes legislation passed by the Georgia Legislature following the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. The law allows prosecutors to classify existing charges as hate crimes before trial. A jury would first have to establish guilt and then determine whether it was a hate crime.
Pak, who also represents Suncha Kim’s family, said Long’s case will not change Long’s possible life in prison or the death penalty, but it is symbolically important.
“My wish for our clients is that they have their day in court and get an answer to a situation that is just beyond comprehension, to try to put some logic into it and get some justice,” Pak said.
So far, federal authorities have not filed any hate crimes against Long. A Justice Department spokesman told CNN the federal investigation into the Atlanta Spa shootings remains open as officials continue to monitor state cases.
Rep. Judy Chu, a California Democrat and chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, who was previously concerned that Long would not be charged with hate crimes, told CNN she was heartened by the response from state and federal officials. Fulton County prosecutors are treating the case as a hate crime, and the Justice Department “has committed to review the evidence to determine whether it meets federal hate crime criteria,” Chu said.
“There is no question in my mind that these killings were premeditated acts of hate,” Chu said in a statement.
“I miss the little things”
As Peterson and his family await a trial, he tries not to feel the loss of his mother in every corner of their home, especially in the kitchen, where he proudly keeps the ceramic bowls and pots his mother used to teach him how to cook his favorite dish, kimchi-jigae, a kind of traditional stew.
“I miss the little things. I miss her when she needs me to change the lightbulb, update her computer, go to the store for cat litter, or carry a 24-carton of water,” Peterson said. “You know, those are the things I wish she could ask me today.”
Yue was a traditional Korean, a mother who taught her multiracial sons to fully embrace their Asian heritage and do a good job, he says. She understood the outrage and pain following the police killings of black men and women, Peterson says, just as she was terrified by the surge in anti-Asian attacks early in the pandemic.
“She loved America, she loved Georgia, but it hadn’t escaped her notice how most (Asian) women in America today feel the threat of violence. It’s a constant that hovers over her life in her day-to-day activities,” he said.
If he could speak to her today, Peterson said his mother would be proud that he is willing to stand up for her and the other victims.
More Asian Americans are being attacked
In the year since the Atlanta spa shooting, violent assaults and harassment have frightened and physically injured Asian Americans across the country.
One of them is Hoa Nguyen, a 68-year-old grandmother in Brooklyn who was punched in the face by a stranger on her way to the market on January 19.
“I turned my head to the right and he hit me twice more behind my ear on the left side. Then he went back to go the way he came,” Nguyen said.
While Nguyen, who is Vietnamese, did not sustain any major injuries, she no longer feels safe walking the streets or even taking the bus or train to visit her daughter in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood.
“We never had to look over my shoulder as we walked around town and now I look over my shoulder every time I go outside,” said Nguyen’s son, 42-year-old Khanh Nguyen.
The suspect, Mercel Jackson, 51, was arrested and charged with assault, harassment and hate crimes, according to Brooklyn prosecutors. He told police he “don’t like the way Chinese people look,” he thinks “Chinese people look like measles,” and “don’t like it when Chinese people look at him,” according to court documents.
The attack prompted neighbors and several nonprofits in New York to offer their emotional and legal support to the Nguyen family, Khanh Nguyen said. Unfortunately, this sparked a different kind of anti-Asian hatred toward the family.
“Nobody takes to the streets and yells things at us, but despite the sadness of these stories, there are still people who come online and spit hate at us,” he said.
In New York alone, according to NYPD data, there were 131 incidents last year that were confirmed to have anti-Asian bias. That’s a significant increase from 27 reported incidents in 2020 and one in 2019.
The full extent of the violence across the country is unclear. Statistics from advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate, collected after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, suggest there have been more than 10,000 hate incidents against Asians in the US, but the organization’s data is crowdsourced, self-reported and not independently verified.
But even when these incidents are reported, getting a hate crime conviction is a challenge, said Jennifer Wu, a lawyer representing the Nguyens and the family of GuiYing Ma, a 61-year-old woman killed in Queens by a man was attacked with a rock and died last month.
In New York, which, like Georgia, has a law increasing the penalty for hate crimes, the law requires bias to be the “whole or substantial factor” motivating an attack.
That’s a high standard, Wu says, because it “requires getting into the mind of the perpetrator,” and there could be more than one contributing factor, Wu says.
“The way the law handles hate crimes is by forcing people to choose a reason for committing the hate crime,” Wu said. The law is not structured to recognize the reality that the reason we love and hate people is for a variety of reasons, not just one reason.”
For Peterson, who lost his mother in the Atlanta spa shooting, there wasn’t just one reason the victims were being targeted. Not only was his mother in the wrong place at the wrong time, he said. Peterson believes the suspect had in mind her racial identity, her gender, her job and what that represented to him.
“She wasn’t just Asian, and she wasn’t just female. These two are inextricably linked. She’s both at the same time, and you can’t separate one,” said Peterson.
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