Police say racially motivated crimes are widespread and underreported

A series of muggings of Chinese students in Britain may be part of what one social justice expert calls the "deteriorating situation" of violent attacks, discrimination and hate crimes against Chinese people living in the country.

Anecdotal reports of as many as eight break-ins and robberies of Chinese students since early July at the University of Birmingham have led to suspicions they are being targeted for their perceived wealth and are seen as easy marks.

One confirmed attack of a male student in the Selly Oak area of the city resulted in severe facial injuries.

A Birmingham student says she and her roommate have become scared to venture out alone after an attempted break-in of their room, as well as an incident in which strangers followed them home at night.

"My roommate was at home, and she heard violent knocking before someone outside started to pick the lock. She waited until I came back to call the police," recalls Yang Zidan, 21. "It took about 20 to 30 minutes before the police came. Now, I'm afraid to go out alone."

Birmingham University issued a statement after the attack on the male student, warning people to be on their guard.

The incident in Britain came days after textile designer Zhang Chaolin was fatally injured by robbers in Aubervilliers, a northeastern suburb of Paris. Zhang, who hit his head on the pavement, fell into a coma and died five days later.

Meriem Derkaoui, the mayor of Aubervilliers, described the attack as a racially motivated murder. Members of the Chinese community in Paris gathered to mourn Zhang.

Le Parisien quoted one student who said the attack was "based on prejudices that the Chinese are weak, docile and rich".

Aubervilliers is home to a sizable Chinese community, many of who work in the area's cut-price fashion outlets.

Reported cases of violence against Chinese are just the tip of the iceberg, according to Gary Craig, a professor of social justice at the University of Hull. He says working-class Chinese - often from the service industry - across Britain are frequently subject to violent crime and racist abuse that goes unreported because the Chinese community has a documented lack of confidence in the police.

"The two projects I've worked on both showed very high levels of racism against Chinese people in the UK," Craig says. "If they are subject to racist attacks or abuse, Chinese people tend to be very wary of the police, either because they have had a bad experience in the past or because they don't trust the police will take it seriously. So they don't report it. The whole issue of racism against Chinese people tends to be somewhat hidden."

Craig contributed to a 2016 survey conducted by the Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics in Hangzhou into the social and economic issues facing the Chinese population in Northeast England. Seventy percent of those interviewed said that reports to the police were not followed up.

He also worked on a 2009 study by anti-racist charity The Monitoring Group, which concluded that the Chinese community faces levels of racial harassment that are perhaps even higher than those experienced by any other minority group.

A 2012 survey of more than 9,000 students across Britain by the National Union of Students saw similar results. Thirty percent of Chinese respondents said they had been victims of racial hate incidents, more than any other ethnic group.

Addressing crime is made harder due to underreporting of incidents. A 2013 report by the British Chinese Project and the All Party Parliamentary China Group found a "lack of confidence" in the police within the Chinese community. Half of the 520 people surveyed said they did not trust the police to "deal effectively with their cases".

Manchester's Chinese Community Centre set up a hate-crime report center in 2005 in response to rising levels of bigotry toward Chinese and the murder of restaurant owner Mi Gao Huang Chen. In April that year, Chen was beaten to death by a large group of youths outside his takeaway in Wigan, Greater Manchester.

According to a report by the center, Chinese people are verbally or physically harassed on a daily basis in the northern city. The center found that while 61 percent of Chinese in Manchester had been victims of hate crimes, 75 percent said they chose not to report incidents to authorities.

Hate crimes across Britain surged by 42 percent in the two weeks after the June 23 referendum on Brexit compared with the same period in 2015, fueled by anti-immigrant sentiment.

"Hate crimes have come under greater scrutiny in recent times," Craig says. "One structural problem is in the data collection of hate crimes. When you look at the way data is collected in terms of ethnic origin, you get black African, Afro-Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, but Chinese fall under 'other'.

"So the Chinese are made 'invisible' by public policy. The police collect the data but don't disaggregate it to show the impact on Chinese people."

Rosa Hui, director of the Bristol and Avon Chinese Women's Group, says there are cultural and practical reasons many in the Chinese community choose not to report a crime.

"Sometimes, it's a language barrier, and sometimes it's a cultural thing - Chinese people have a perspective of 'Everything is fine. I don't want to make trouble. I am in a foreign country. I should be self-sufficient'.

"Asking for help is against the grain, it's seen as a sign of weakness."

Hui explains that the perception that reporting a crime to the police is futile also contributes to underreporting. She received lottery funding in May to set up a helpline for Chinese people to report crimes without going directly to the authorities.

Third-party reporting is a tactic employed by Chinese associations and police departments around the country to tackle the problem of under-reporting. In its study, the All Party Parliamentary China Group emphasizes a need for an increase in funding for local Chinese associations, identifying them as the most effective organizations to deal with "the most hard to reach Chinese".

In 2012, the West Midlands Police launched a third-party reporting center along with the Chinese Society in Birmingham, allowing victims to speak with trained staff in their own language.

"Some people who come from other countries have a notion of what the police service is like that might be different to how we operate in Britain. Sometimes those perceptions of the police service might lead to mistrust," says Inspector Gareth Morris, a neighborhood policing manager for central Birmingham.

"We want to encourage people to talk about their problems, so setting them up with a familiar face, someone who speaks the same language, who operates and exists within a community that people are familiar with, can help break down some of those initial reporting barriers and at least give us some picture of what's going on."

Morris says the West Midlands Police have taken a number of measures to try and improve communication with the Chinese community, including language training and working groups that bring together officers and Chinese business owners.

"We want Chinese people to have the confidence to report to us, and equally we want them to feed us intelligence and information, to be a set of eyes and ears, that's how the British police functions. We'd like people to work with us and to join the police."

Dai Tian contributed to this story.

angus@mail.chinadailyuk.com

(China Daily European Weekly 08/26/2016 page14)