On June 26th, Cryton Chikoko and Stina Nölken of The BaRE UK spoke to Mariko Hayashi, a writer, independent researcher on human rights and migration, and director of the Southeast and East Asian Centre. Mariko talks about her experience of the lockdown as a Japanese migrant and her work to respond to the increase in racist abuse against Southeast and East Asian communities since the coronavirus outbreak.
A full transcript of the interview will follow below. Small changes were made for clarity. You can find the original, recorded interview in video format on our social media: Facebook and Instagram.
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Cryton: I have here in this interview my colleague Stina. She is in Germany, and I’m in Glasgow. Our guest is Mariko Hayashi. She is a writer and independent researcher on migration and human rights issues. She is also the director of the Southeast and East Asian Centre, among other things. Mariko, you are welcome.
Mariko: Thank you so much for having me.
Cryton: Where are you based right now?
Mariko: I am in London. In East London.
Cryton: When did you come to the UK, or to London?
Mariko: I initially came to the UK in 2007. I came as a student. First I was in Cambridge for a year and then I spent three years in Brighton. After that I came to London in 2010 to do a one-year Master’s. I stayed for another two years and then went back to Japan at the end of 2013. I was there for about six years, but I recently came back at the end of last year. So I’ve been back in London for about 7 months, most of them being under lockdown.
Stina: Let’s talk a little bit about the article you wrote for the Independent’s website. You start the article by saying that: “Although most people are excited about shops reopening and the lockdown lifting, as a Japanese migrant I am worried about going back out into public places.” Could you tell us why that is?
Mariko: I wrote this article as a first-person piece, but I wanted to show what the people of East and Southeast Asian communities are feeling. Of course, including myself. That was because just before we went under lockdown, we heard a lot of news and stories about racist abuse related to the coronavirus. I would say that there has been always racism and prejudice against East and Southeast Asians. A lot of mocking, a lot – you know, you ask every single East Asian and Southeast Asians, they have experienced some sort of everyday racism. They will call you “ching chong”, say “ni hao” and do all these funny things. I think a lot of people ignore it, but at the beginning of this year, it has been quite different. We’ve been hearing a lot of news and seen pictures of people being punched in their faces, and all these Chinese takeaways being smashed, the glasses have been smashed. I myself didn’t have any physical effect, but I did feel like people were moving away from me on public transport. It was a few uncomfortable months I had and so going into lockdown was nice. You don’t have to go out anymore, you don’t have to feel like that anymore. But now, things are opening up again and people have to go to work. I remember that time before this lockdown started. I wouldn’t say I’m too scared, but there are some things I’m anxious about.
Cryton: It’s really interesting because generally people think that racism only happens to black people, so this is really something worth noting.
Mariko: Yes. I think that people have different experiences and our experiences will be different from Afro-Caribbean people or other Asian or South Asian people. But this has always been there. I think it’s something that is not spoken much about or given a space to discuss widely, together with other racial issues. It has been coming out now because of this coronavirus and I’ve seen a lot of discussions around that among British East and Southeast Asian communities. I’ve seen a lot of activists, community organisers and a lot of creative people doing that, especially in a creative way. I joined a meeting around that as well. But, I identify myself as a migrant in this country. I wasn’t born here. I came as a young adult and I came back, so I identify myself as a migrant. And among the discussion about racism, hate crime against East and Southeast Asians, in this country, I do feel that the migrant community is still left out of that discussion. So that’s something I wanted to raise in the article that I wrote.
Stina: You also mention in your article that you joined a group of community organisers and you had a meeting with representatives of the police and the office of the mayor of London, and that you invited Home Secretary Patel as well. Could you tell us a bit about what happened at the meeting and maybe the results as well?
Mariko: This is one of the initiatives taken. It’s a group of individuals that came together to respond to the report that was released – I think it was in Sky News first – that the hate crime against East Asians communities has tripled since the beginning of this year. It was saying that they collected the data from 45 territorial police forces from across the UK and also the British transport police. Only in January to March, the reported cases were almost of the same number to what it was in a whole year in the previous year or year before, around 300 cases [a number of cases of hate crime against Chinese people recorded between January and March this year was 267, compare to 375 throughout the whole of 2019 and 360 cases in 2018].
So this was to respond to this figure. There was a group of individuals that came and we started with an open letter to the Home Secretary. Then we did petitions. And then we invited all these people who are in position to make political decisions to respond. So the outcome was that the Home Office, or Priti Patel, did not respond at all, or anybody from the Home Office [two weeks after the meeting, the group received a letter from Priti Patel acknowledging their concerns]. From the London mayor office, a representative came just to observe. Also from the police there was an advisor on hate crime from The National Police Chief’s Council. Yes, one person came to explain to us about the situation, how the police are responding to hate crime and what the mechanisms that are there for us to report to or to engage with the police. They did explain how things work, but other than that it has been a discussion among people who organised the open letter together.
It was disappointing that the people we wanted to hear from didn’t really respond, but then again it gave us a space to discuss among ourselves and about what needs to be done. And we did identify some issues, including the fact – this came from the police – that some kinds of hate crime are less likely to be reported than other kinds of hate crime. Hate crime against East and Southeast Asians or Chinese communities are one of the categories that is less likely to be reported. So this something that we found out as an issue. It was a good discussion because its individual volunteers that came to respond and we still keep in contact about the next things we need to be doing.
Cryton: I will take you back to the piece, which you wrote for the Independent. We found it to be excellent. How has it been received by people? Did you get any feedback?
Mariko: Yes, it was an interesting experience for me. I mean, yes, I did get a lot of feedback – mixed messages. I think I did attract some kind of negative comments as well, talking about race and migration and I also mentioned about sexual harassment that are based on racial prejudice. So I did invite mixed messages. Some people said “oh, but Japanese people were racist”, and this is something that, actually, I first included in my piece. I didn’t say that Japanese people were racist, but that in this moment, we have to also challenge the racism within our communities. Of course, we are also victims of racism and racial prejudice, but we know that in our communities, there is discrimination against other people of other backgrounds. Or even within, East and Southeast Asian communities are very diverse. East and Southeast Asia – these are huge areas, so of course within there are a lot of relationships between different groups, so I wanted to say that in the piece: at the same time, we need to address that and challenge ourselves to bring more diverse discussions in this issue. But then it had to go during the editing process. Some people pointed that out.
Cryton: We know that you are also a researcher on human rights and migration issues. Tell us a bit about that.
Mariko: The most recent work I’ve done is with a Filipino organisation in London that I’ve known for a long time, since the last time I was here. I coordinated a research project with them on the experience of Filipino migrant workers in precarious situations, meaning with restricted status or undocumented people, mainly, during the pandemic and lockdown. We interviewed around 80 people. It was done by another researcher; I facilitated the whole process. It was to see how their experiences during lockdown and how this hostile environment has pushed these people into overcrowded houses, and “no work, no pay” under the lockdown, putting them into destitutions and unable to seek any sorts of healthcare or medical treatment, even though they were suspected of COVID infections.
In fact, we know one [undocumented] person who suddenly died. They had really serious symptoms, the symptoms of COVID-19 – of course, we don’t know whether he did have it or not, because he never went to the hospital – but he was just too scared to call 111 or to go to the doctors, and then he passed away. So we know that there are people like that and we know that there are many other people who are in a similar situation. If they get sick, they will not go to the hospital. This is because of the data sharing that they had before, overcharging, they will be charged by the NHS, just the pure fear of seeking any kind of public support or dealing with authorities. That’s the recent research that I coordinated.
Cryton: Excellent. Thank you so much, Mariko. We are very happy that you were available for us.
Mariko: Thank you very much. It was very nice talking with you. Thank you for having me.