An Analysis of Victim Cases Reported to the Hotline 1-2-3
About “Hotline 1-2-3”
The “Hotline 1-2-3” refers to a toll-free telephone line, 1-877-912-3123. It was set up by the Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group Association of Canada in response to growing concerns about anti-Asian discrimination and hate violence in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. It operates 24/7, allowing the public to report their personal experiences of racism, discrimination, and hate actions against Asians in Canada. We are grateful for the financial support of the Department of Justice Canada for this report on the Hotline 1-2-3 project.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
This report was made possible by the financial support of the Department of Justice Canada through the Victims and Survivors of Crime Week initiative of the Justice Canada Policy Centre for Victim Issues.
The goal of 2024 Victims and Survivors of Crime Week (May 12-18, 2024) is to raise awareness about the issues facing victims and survivors and about the services, assistance and laws in place to help victims, survivors, and their families. Victims and Survivors of Crime Week is also a time to acknowledge the work of service providers and their dedication to assisting victims and survivors of crime and their families.
The theme for Victims and Survivors of Crime Week is “The Power of Collaboration”. This report showcases the results of collaboration between community organizations.
Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group Association of Canada (SAAHCAG) is a community organization to promote social harmony, fight racism, and build connection in Canada. It is incorporated in B.C., as a not-for-profit and non-partisan association of Canadians with Asian heritages (Home – Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group (1-2-3.site).
SAAHCAG’s mission is defined as:
- To fight against racism and end hate crimes in Canada;
- To raise awareness of the existence and seriousness of racism and hate crimes in Canada, to encourage the communities to monitor racist incidents and hate crime cases;
- To promote the sharing of information and knowledge regarding Canada’s laws, regulations, government action plans, law enforcement, and preventive strategies, and international and national initiatives to combat racism and hate crimes; and
- To promote social equality and multi-culturalism.
We are grateful to live, work, and be in relation with people from across many traditional and unceded territories, covering all regions of British Columbia.
We’d also like to acknowledge partnership support of Access Pro Bono Society of British Columbia, which is an independent organization of community-minded directors and staff who rely on the kindness of volunteer pro bono lawyers to provide access to justice across BC (Access Pro Bono – Homepage).
We appreciate Keven PI, a student at St. George’s Senior School, Vancouver, BC, for providing French translation of the Executive Summary of this report
Executive Summary
This report presents findings from an analysis of 19 cases of victims that were reported to and recorded by the Hotline 1-2-3, a tollfree telephone line set up in 2021 by Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group Association of Canada (SAAHCAG).
The key findings of the analysis paint a deeply concerning picture of our society’s ongoing struggles with racism, hate crimes, violence, discrimination, perhaps even more disconcerting, real systemic issues that disproportionately affect individuals of Chinese ethnicity. These findings include that:
- Types of Incidents: Racism and hate incidents take many forms, including, physically assault by stranger, verbal abuse or offensive racial slurs, stereotype and unfair treatment, and harassment or threat.
- Locations of Incidents: Racism and hate incidents could happen anywhere in our day life, from private spaces to public ones, and from physical locations to virtual ones.
- Targets of Incidents: Racism and hate incidents could happen to anyone in our community, regardless their social and economic characteristics. A visible Chinese ethnicity is the target.
- Systemic Discrimination: Incidents can result from individual behaviors as well as because of the consequences of systemic discrimination.
- Seeking for Support: There is a mixed outcome when victims seek for support.
- Traumatic Memories: Racism and hate incidents could cause severe and long-lasting traumatic memories.
SAAHCAG appreciates the collaboration with Access Pro Bono Society of British Columbia which provides legal advisory services to our victims.
SAAHCAG welcomes BC’s new legislation “Anti-Racism Act” and wants more collaboration actions from all levels of the government and all players of the community to combat all forms of racism and hate crimes in this country that we call home.
Results of Analysis
1. Introduction
Anti-Asian racism has a long history in Canada, and it is ongoing (Yao, 2022). In the wave of Covid-19 pandemic, anti-Asian hate incidents and crimes were rising drastically across the country. Some were reported to the police departments (Statcan, 2021), informed by media (Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, 2024), and studied by academia (Guo & Guo, 2021; Kwak et. al, 2024; Cui, 2024), but many incidents and crimes remained un(der) reported.
Hate crime is defined as a criminal violation motivated by hate, based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, or any other similar factor.
There could be many reasons for un(der) reporting of hate incidents and crimes. Based on our interaction and consultation with the Chinese Canadian community, we observed two major reasons for victims who didn’t report their horrific incidents and horrible experiences. One is their lack of understanding and trust about assistant services and laws in places, and the other is the language barrier for many newcomers.
To fill in this gap, the Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group Association of Canada (SAAHCAG) decided to set up a hotline as one of its initiatives on December 31, 2021. The hotline is a toll-free telephone line, 1-8779-123-123, and opens 24/7.
By the end of 2023, the Hotline 1-2-3 has received 19 complaint cases, most of those in Chinese and a few in English, covering regions of the Great Vancouver, Okanagan, and the Great Toronto areas.
This report presents findings from an analysis of these 19 cases of victim that we collected through this Hotline 1-2-3.
We understand that hate incidents and crimes could happen by different motivations and may take many different forms, this report focuses only on victims of anti-Asian hate cases reported to the Hotline 1-2-3.
2. Methodology
The “Hotline 1-2-3” refers to a toll-free telephone line, 1-8779-123-123. It was set up by SAAHCAG in response to raising concerns about anti-Asian discrimination and hate violence in the wave of the COVID-19 outbreak. It operates 24/7, allowing the public to report their personal experience of racism discrimination and hatred actions against Asians in Canada.
The Hotline 1-2-3 received a total of 19 call records between its operations on December 31, 2021, and December 31, 2023. This report is based on an analysis of these 19 victim cases, all residents of Chinese origin.
Unlike a large sample survey (such as Angus Reid Institute, 2023), this report is more of a qualitative narrative in nature with a combination of some quantitative descriptions to reflect the multifaceted challenges that we are facing in the Chinese community in Canada.
Even if these call records are self-reported victims, this analysis is intended to present and share these personal experiences to raise awareness of the severe degree of the problem of anti-Chinese discrimination and hate violence.
Given the consideration of personal privacy, we identify each case as a sequence number plus an initial of the last name of the victim, such as “06-M”, or “14-H”, etc.
Although the total number of cases that Hotline 1-2-3 received was 19, some of them reported multiple types of incidents in one call. Therefore, the actual number of incidents was greater than 19. This report analyzed these incidents in detail and explained them in the corresponding sections below of the Key Findings.
3. Key Findings
3.1 Racism and Hate Incidents Take Various Forms
The record of 19 cases reported to the Hotline 1-2-3 shows that victims experienced various types and forms of racism and hate incidents. Nearly 32 percent of victims reported being physically assaulted by strangers, 28 percent experiencing verbal abuse or offensive racial slurs, 24 percent being stereotyped and unfair treatment, and another 16 percent facing harassment or threat (see Chart below).
There are a few cases that reported multiple incidents under different accounts. For example, one family (01-L) reported the daughter being verbally threated at a school playground by strangers who yield at her, “go away, go away, I will kill you.” Later the father was stabbed by one of the strangers and suffered severely injury. When the father was sent to the hospital, his wife was experiencing unfair and unfriendly treatment by dispatched police officers who insisted on searching the victim’s house with no sympathy and necessary respect to the family’s privacy and reputation.
Therefore, the total samples in the report became 25 cases based on 19 phone call reporting records.
3.2 Racism and Hate Incidents Could Happen Anywhere
The Hotline 1-2-3 call records show that racism and hate incidents could happen anywhere in our daily lives, from private spaces to public ones, and physical locations to virtual ones. Table 1 (below) reports the location of victims by type of incident. Eleven out of twenty-five reported incidents happened in public spaces, including on public transit or at the bus stop, at public park or on the street, and in the store or at the store parkade. Six out of twenty-five occurred in private spaces, including at domicile, house back alley or driveway, even at the workplace or on school grounds.
A growing concern is that racism discrimination and attacks could happen in virtual spaces, such as a phone call or an email, even if the Hotline 1-2-3 didn’t have a record of incidents occurring in online social media spaces.
Fxxx you. Go back to China, you are a fxxxing Chink.
Table 1: Location of Victims by Types of Incidents
3.3 Racism and Hate Incidents Could Happen to Anyone
The victims who reported their incidents include individuals having many different characteristics, such as residents at home, landlords of rental property, employees at the workplace, permit applicants at city authority, voters casting their ballot at polling stations, international students, etc. It is obvious that racism and hate incidents could happen to anyone in our community.
Despite the diversified social and economic characteristics of victims, one in common is that they are all visible minorities — the Chinese ethnicity.
Although the Hotline 1-2-3 didn’t collect all personal identities such as age, gender, etc., the information we received can confirm that the most vulnerable group is those who speak little English. International students are another vulnerable group.
3.4 Systemic Discrimination Is Real
The Hotline 1-2-3 call records suggest clearly that racism and hate incidents can result from individual behaviours as well as because of the consequences of a discriminatory system, i.e., known as systemic discrimination.
Systemic discrimination can be described as patterns of behaviour, policies or practices that are part of the structures of an organization, and which create or perpetuate disadvantage for racialized persons.
When incidents happen, victims are most likely to call police services seeking for help in the first place. Nevertheless, many of the victims didn’t get police responses and services as they expected. For example, in one case of landlord-tenant dispute, the victim (18-M) complained:
My tenant (Caucasian) called the police five times, and they always came to investigate. However, when I called the police three times. They refused to respond.
What is worse is that the victims even suffered a double dip of discrimination and unfair treatment by the police officers who attended at the scene (mentioned in Section 3.1 of this report).
It is concerning that “there is discrimination in the police response.
Another case (06-M) reported a group of Chinese residents were facing verbal abuse and later being stereotyped and unfairly treated by offensive language at a municipal voting station, such as:
- Why do you live in Canada but can’t speak good English?
- They don’t understand English, how do they know who to vote for?
The officer insisted there was no racism in these cases, only because the staff was also an Asian. Therefore, they didn’t think an Asian would have racism discrimination against Asian immigrants.
Another case (07-W) complained about the way being unresponsive and unfairly treated by the city staff in the process of getting a city permit for rebuilding a driveway.
3.5 Victims Seek Support: A Mixed Outcome
According to the Hotline 1-2-3 records, only nine out of nineteen victims either called or emailed police seeking help, using either the emergency number 911, an un-emergency number or the general contact email address of police services. Over half of the victims didn’t indicate if they had contacted police or just didn’t contact police services at all.
This is a clear sign to suggest that official statistics like StatsCan or alike may significantly underestimate and underreport the actual cases of racism- and hate-motivated crimes or offences.
Among those victims who did contact police services, less than one-third of them expressed their satisfaction and appreciation for their experience of police attainment. Some of them even asked Hotline 1-2-3 to convey their gratefulness to the police officers who looked after their cases.
Many victims called Hotline 1-2-3 asking for help to report their cases to the police on their behalf. It appears an easy-access reporting hotline like Hotline 1-2-3 is a valuable supplement to the official reporting system.
The Hotline 1-2-3 did not stop at just reporting and recording the victim cases but referring these cases to Access Pro Bono for further legal assistance. Among these cases, three individuals have received comprehensive legal advice, while the remaining cases were provided with essential legal information. This support is invaluable in navigating the complex legal landscape surrounding hate crimes.
3.6 Racism and Hate Incidents Caused Traumatic Memories
Many studies have reported the negative impacts of racism and hate crimes on victims and our society in general (Ndegwa & McDonald, 2023; Ngo, Pasaraba, Wu, & Lau, 2023). The Hotline 1-2-3 call records reaffirmed the direct and indirect effects of a hate crime on a victim can be powerful and severe.
One victim (01-L) reported that:
Since there events, my wife has been experiencing severe emotional distress, including sleeplessness, anxiety, and fear triggered by the memories of the police officer who searched our home. She now requires psychological treatment. We have since cleaned our home thoroughly and taken various precautions to alleviate her stress.
This entire situation has caused significant trauma and emotional turmoil for my wife and me.
Another victim (04-ID147) described his feeling after the incident:
A complex mix of emotions overwhelmed me, as this incident turned out to be one of the most distressing experiences I’ve had in years.
After this incident, I no longer feel safe in my current living situation. I’m at a loss for what to do next
One victim (18-M) complained that:
When I called the police three times, they refused to respond… This entire ordeal has left a profoundly negative impression on my children, making them feel that Canada is not a safe place.
4. Conclusions
This report sheds light on cold lines of racism and hate crime incidents that have recently reported to the Hotline 1-2-3. These incidents encompass a wide range of offenses, including physical assaults by strangers, instances of racial discrimination, verbal abuse, offensive racial slurs, hate speech, stereotype and unfair treatment, and harassment or threat.
Hate has no place in Canada and will not be tolerated.
These incidents collectively paint a deeply concerning picture of our society’s ongoing struggles with hate crimes, violence, discrimination, and perhaps even more disconcerting, potential systemic issues that disproportionately affect individuals of Chinese ethnicity. This highlights the pressing need to address not only the immediate incidents but also the underlying issues that allow hate crimes to persist and thrive.
What is particularly disheartening is the varied settings in which these incidents have occurred. Hate crimes and discrimination are not confined to a specific environment; instead, they have manifested themselves in private and public spaces, workplace, as well as virtual spaces where people should feel safe. This underscores the urgency of addressing this issue comprehensively, as it affects people in multiple facets of their lives, from public spaces to private homes.
We are grateful that these cases have been referred to Access Pro Bono for further assistance. Among these cases, three individuals have received comprehensive legal advice, while the remaining cases were provided with essential legal information. This support is invaluable in navigating the complex legal landscape surrounding hate crimes.
In conclusion, this report serves as an urgent call to action. It emphasizes the urgency of addressing hate crimes, violence, and discrimination in our society. While Access Pro Bono has made strides in helping victims, the root causes and systemic issues must be tackled to prevent such incidents from recurring. Every member of our community deserves to live safe, work safe, be safe, as well as feel safe regardless of his or her characteristics.
We intend that the findings of this report will raise awareness and advocate for comprehensive measures that ensure the safety and security of all individuals in our diverse and inclusive society.
At the time of this report being finalized, British Columbia introduced a new legislation “Anti-Racism Act” aiming to remove systemic barriers faced by Indigenous and racialized people when accessing government programs and services, and to provide support to those who have been negatively impacted.
Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group Association of Canada welcomes this new legislation and wants more actions from all levels of the government and all players of the community to combat all forms of racism and hate crimes in this country that we call home.
Presented By
- Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Advocacy Group Association
Prepared By
- Kenny Zhang
- Ally Wang
- Jimmy Yan
Disclaimer
Voices & Bridges publishes opinions like this from the community to encourage constructive discussion and debate on important issues. Views represented in the articles are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the V&B.