MPR Urges Foreign Minister To Deliver Concerned Note To The US 'Stop Anti-Asian Violence'

Ahmad Basarah / Special

JAKARTA - Deputy Chairman of the Indonesian People's Consultative Assembly, Ahmad Basarah, urged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to immediately convey a note of concern to the United States over the recent horrendous racial violence. The Foreign Ministry must ask the US government to stop anti-Asian racial violence.

According to him, the violence and sentiment cannot be separated from the aggressiveness of American foreign policy towards Asia during the four short years of the Trump administration.

"The diplomatic language used by the US during the four years of the Trump administration is less elegant and has hurt Asian countries a lot", Basarah said in his statement on Saturday, March 27.

The Head of Foreign Affairs of the PDIP Party DPP said that the US also seemed to often take unilateral actions that did not reflect the norms of reliable diplomacy as a superpower country.

Among them, stated that COVID-19 is Kung-flu/Chinese Virus. In addition, the open debate also stated that India's air was dirty, unilaterally stopping Iran's nuclear proliferation and the Paris agreement, and others.

This, said Basarah, sparked sentiment of white superiority in the US and led to racial violence against people of Asian descent that were thought to shift white domination.

"America is a qibla for human rights, democracy, and anti-discrimination for the world. America is considered the perfect country as the melting pot of nations in the world", he said.

Basarah emphasized that no nation has the right to claim to be native US citizens. Because white European citizens in the US are not native Americans.

"So when the 21st century racial violence occurs in the US, the building of world citizens' trust in US democracy, human rights, and anti-discrimination principles will collapse. A high price to pay", he explained.

Basarah hopes that Indonesia can learn a lot from the anti-Asian violence in the US because of many ethnic groups, races, and religions.

"The Republic of Indonesia does not belong to any group, does not belong to any religion, does not belong to any ethnic group, does not belong to any group of customs, but belongs to all of us from Sabang to Merauke!", he concluded.

For information, cases of violence against Americans of Asian descent occurred again in San Francisco, when a Chinese old woman fought a man who beat her until she injured her eye.

The incident also traumatized the 76-year-old woman from traveling outside the house.

The perpetrator was arrested by local authorities on Thursday, March 18.

As reported by the South China Morning Post, an old woman named Xiao Zhen Zie told in an interview with KPIX-TV that she was waiting to cross a street in downtown San Francisco on Wednesday, March 17, when a 39-year-old man punched her for no reason.

The incident also marks one of several recent attacks on elderly Asian-Americans in the US.