I was elected a member of parliament in December 2019, just months before the Covid pandemic changed all of our lives. As Britain’s first MP of south-east Asian descent, I am well aware of the fact that, for members of east and south-east Asian (ESEA) communities, the pandemic marked a horrifying rise in racist hate crime directed towards us. This experience was not new and, four years on, it has not gone away.
During the pandemic, hate crime against the ESEA community rose by almost 70%, underpinned by a xenophobic framing of the virus’ origin. In 2021, the figures remained about 50% above those in 2019. But many of us know that these statistics do not paint the full picture, and the situation is graver than the data suggests.
