Georgia shootings raise concerns of hate crimes

ATLANTA－Eight people, six of whom were Asian women, were killed in shootings at three different spas in the US state of Georgia on Tuesday, with a 21-year-old man in custody on suspicion of staging all three attacks, police said.

The shootings came with many Asian Americans already on edge following a recent spike in hate crimes against the community. It triggered immediate fears that Asian-run businesses may have been deliberately targeted.

Four of the victims were killed at Young's Asian Massage near Acworth, a suburb of Georgia's capital city Atlanta, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County sheriff's office told the paper the victims were two Asian women, a white woman and a white man.

The Atlanta police department separately confirmed that four women were found dead at two other spas in northeast Atlanta.

Police told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that all four Atlanta victims were Asian women.

The Republic of Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that its diplomats in Atlanta have confirmed from police that four of the victims who died were women of Korean descent. The ministry said the office of its Consulate General in Atlanta is trying to confirm the nationality of the women.

Authorities have identified Robert Aaron Long as a suspect in all three shootings. Long was taken into custody after a "brief pursuit "about 240 kilometers from Atlanta, the Georgia Department of Safety said in a statement on Facebook.

The shootings came as reports of attacks against Asian-Americans, primarily elders, have spiked in recent months－fueled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Marked increase

News of the shootings came just hours after the release of a report by the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate suggested a marked increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans－with women disproportionately affected.

In a tally of incidents reported to the group between March 2020 and February this year, almost 70 percent of Asian-American survey respondents said they had faced verbal harassment and just over one in 10 said they had experienced physical assault.

Georgia is home to nearly 500,000 Asian residents, or just over 4 percent of its population.

In an address to the nation last week, US President Joe Biden forcefully condemned what he called "vicious hate crimes against Asian Americans who have been attacked, harassed, blamed and scapegoated".

"It's wrong. It's un-American. And it must stop," he said.

Agencies via Xinhua