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On Sunday, members of the Senate and House of Representatives questioned the validity of the initial assessment made by the director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation of the fatal shooting, which killed eight people, including six Asian women, in Atlanta.
The FBI had ruled out in its initial assessment that the incident might not be part of a hate crime.
“To me, it looks like it was racially motivated,” Democratic Sen. Tami Duckworth said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Police in Atlanta, Georgia, are still investigating the motive for the shooting of eight people at health facilities, including six Asian women, on Tuesday, while the FBI is assisting in the investigation.
“I want to see a deeper investigation into whether these shootings and other similar crimes are racially motivated or not,” added Duckworth, one of the two in the Asian American Senate.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth expressed doubts about FBI Director Chris Wray’s initial assessment that the fatal shooting of six Asian women at Atlanta-area spas may not constitute a hate crime, saying it “ appears motivated by racial motives ” https://t.co/399FxpB4JP pic.twitter.com/y2f2C6lFZp
– Reuters (@Reuters) March 21, 2021
In an interview with NPR Radio last week, FBI Director Chris Ray said “it does not appear” that “race was included in the mass shooting.”
Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” expressed doubts about Ray’s assessment, stating that he believed race played a role.
“We all know hate when we see it,” he said. “It is tragic to see this type of violence again.”
The attack sparked terror among Asian groups in the United States.
Trump has been repeatedly accused of “racism” for using phrases like “Chinese virus” when referring to the coronavirus pandemic, while speaking that China could have stopped the spread of the virus in the world.
“We are not the virus” … rallies in support of Asian Americans in Georgia
Hundreds of protesters rallied outside the Capitol building in Georgia, Atlanta, on Saturday in support of the Asian-American community in the country.
The defendant, Robert Aaron Long, a 21-year-old white male, denied having any racist motives and said he was facing “sex addiction” problems, but investigators deemed it too early to resolve his motives.
A member of the House Judiciary Committee, Ted Liu, said investigators should seriously investigate whether Long intended to target women of certain backgrounds.
“It seemed to me that he knew he was going to places where the people he shot were disproportionately Asian and female,” he told CNN.
According to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, the rate of hate crimes against Asian Americans increased by 149 percent in 2020 in 16 major cities compared to 2019.
On Sunday, Dacureth revealed that he had written a letter to the FBI Director and Attorney General Merrick Garland asking them to take a closer look at whether hate crimes go unreported.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited Atlanta on Friday to highlight the need to prevent gender-based violence and keep women safe.
“Silence is complicity. We cannot be complicit. We have to speak, we must act,” Biden said in a speech at Emory University, urging Americans to fight what he called “the resurgence of xenophobia.”
From Atlanta, Biden asks to confront violence against Asian Americans
On Friday, US President Joe Biden of Atlanta, where he went to comfort Asian Americans after a series of shootings, urged citizens not to collude and act to prevent race-related violence.
Across the United States, vigils of solidarity with the victims were held and materialized in protests against the increase in attacks against people of Asian descent.
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