The world is increasingly affected by global events that project the conflict, and by the local implications that come with it.
Four years ago, COVID-19 spread from East Asia to the rest of the world. With it, hate against the Asian community in B.C. also spread like a virus.
Anti-Asian hate incidents in the City of Vancouver rose by 717 per cent in 2020 compared to the previous year, resulting in the city being called the “Anti-Asian Hate Crime Capital of North America.”
After the attacks of October 7, 2023, committed by terror organization Hamas against Israel, we saw an unprecedented rise in antisemitism, targeting Jewish communities across the province.
In January, the Vancouver Police Department reported that antisemitic hate incidents in 2023 rose by 62 percent compared to the previous year.
Hate impedes a community’s ability to practice its culture, congregate in its communal spaces, and even exist in our cities.
Depending on where you live, law enforcement resources available to address hate from vary significantly.
The data above are from the Vancouver Police Department, in part, because they are the only police force in B.C. with a dedicated hate-crime reporting portal available online in 13 languages, which allows them to produce reliable and comparable yearly statistics. Looking to catch up, the RCMP detachments in North Vancouver and Coquitlam have introduced hate-incident online reporting pilot programs; however, the remaining police detachments in Metro Vancouver and the province have little or no dedicated hate-crime reporting tools.
When wishing to report a hate crime, victims face many barriers. For example, police websites are predominantly available only in English, problematic because many of those who experience hate face language barriers. Also, local community police often have insufficient training and are under-resourced, leaving victims to call sometimes unstaffed non-emergency phone lines, to handle such…
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