Hi everyone I hope you're all well so in the wake of the current giant global
problem that is bringing the world to its knees much attention is being given
to China and the role it may or may not have played in the spreading of this
problem now while YouTube has recently said that it is a-ok to make videos
mentioning the name of this giant global crisis I don't 100% believe them so in
the interest of not having this video potentially deranked demonetised or
deleted i am going to continue to refer to what we all know I'm talking about as
the beverage bug now there has been a lot of increasingly fearless commentary
about the culpability of China in the rapid spread of this bug and all of the
things that did wrong we know now that China muzzled whistleblowers who tried
to warn the rest of the world what was happening in late 2019 we also know that
while they claim to have handled the virus exceedingly well a large number of
testing kits they sent everson magnanimously to countries like Spain
and Turkey didn't actually work we know that given the pattern of infection and
loss of life in other countries that there is a reasonable likelihood that
China is lying about the true number of cases it ended up having and we also
know that while in locking down Wuhan Beijing forbade travel from that area to
the rest of China it did not ban travel from that area to the rest of the world
enabling the beverage bug to race across the globe wreaking health and economic
havoc everywhere it went needless to say China is very much in
the bad books of an awful lot of countries at the moment however there is
another rather damning story coming out of China which has developed over the
past few weeks and is now gaining traction in the Western media that is
tales of discrimination and racism against African expats living in the
Chinese city of Guangzhou but look before we go any further I would like to
make it abundantly clear that in this video when I say the word China I am
referring to China the nation-state and to the Chinese Communist Party I am not
referring to the Chinese people themselves this has nothing to do with
them I am also not saying that all Chinese people are racist
simply reporting what is going on in Guangzhou and all the circumstances
leading up to it so to any YouTube reviewer who may or
may not be watching this I am absolutely not bagging out the Chinese people just
the powers that be and the policies that have been implemented moving on anyway
since early April videos have been appearing online of African people
living in Guangzhou including a number of students being harassed by police
refused entry to restaurants and stores and even being forced to live on the
streets now did I train my software it's a pity
oh my god oh my god oh my god new cars new cards Nigeria muffin in
China not a China here they are we can in Austria in China no houses you can
tie our room you can tie your house and the anyway in China men are streets
people are outside too much cold too much problem what the country is this
which country is this man oh my god why because of fears that a new increase in
beverage bug cases in the area brought in from overseas is largely the fault of
the African community in this bit in the city specifically in the textile hub
known as little Africa this is despite the fact that there is no evidence to
suggest that the beverage bug is disproportionately represented in the
African community in fact of the 111 cases in Guangzhou that have come from
overseas only about 16 of them were people from Africa five of the cases
from Africa will link to a single restaurant in the little Africa District
while the vast majority of cases were Chinese nationals returning home
nevertheless the stigma that it's all the fault of the Africans has persisted
now anti African sentiment in China is not new it goes back decades which has
made it all too easy for authorities in the city to fan this xenophobic thinking
the catalyst for this particular bout of discrimination was around the start of
April when a rumor started circulating online 300,000
Africans allegedly living in Guangzhou were responsible for a second wave of
infections the rumor was later proved to be false this was coupled with an
incident of a Chinese nurse allegedly being attacked by a Nigerian man at a
hospital as he attempted to evade quarantine the man had arrived in the
city on March 20th tested positive for the Beveridge bug and was receiving
treatment at the hospital however he decided to make a run for it and when
the nurse tried to stop him he reacted with physical aggression photos of the
nurses face got a huge amount of attention on Chinese social media in the
form of thousands and thousands of racist comments against African people
they were called for the deportation of all African immigrants they were
compared to animals they were called dirty along with general calls for a
cleanup of a city that is littered with blacks
now obviously the incident involving that poor nurse is absolutely vile and
should be roundly condemned however projecting that fury onto all
Africans living in Guangzhou would seem wildly misguided to say the least
nevertheless it was after this incident plus the now debunked rumor about
300,000 black people spreading a new wave of the bug that a new order was
implemented by Guangzhou authorities this order made on April 9th and
announced by a city official specified that all people from African countries
must be quarantined for 14 days starting from that day regardless of their
previous circumstances travel history or how long they have been in Guangzhou if
the African citizens in question lived in Guangzhou they could be isolated at
home but a device would be installed on their front doors which would alert
authorities if that door were opened in addition the order stated that those who
did not have somewhere to live would have to spend two weeks in isolation at
our designated Hotel at their own expense this kind of order was not
implemented for any other racial community living in the city however
rather than enabling African citizens to safely quarantine a number of landlords
made the decision to kick out their African tenants without notice
even though they had paid their rent and had had no complaints against them not
only that despite the order making it very clear that African people could
quarantine in hotels the hotels are refusing to take them for fear that they
could spread the bug so with no housing and no hotels there are multiple reports
now of African people being forced onto the streets and sleeping under bridges
including pregnant women huddled on cobbled streets with layers of clothing
to generate heat under the cold skies of 1zu City this is the new way of life for
Africans living in China the very call of their skin now means trouble
screaming a sickness - natives who bear a different skin tone from them Africans
have become subjects of racial profiling Chinese nationals blame them for the
rising number of new coronavirus cases in the country they do you want me to
enter this happily I had even bought my ticket but it was for you one and by the
time I was going to to the subway they stopped me and then they told me that no
foreigner is allowed and I was like why this is a subway they say then they say
that that is the rule then Who am I to argue with the locals I complied Brenda
not her real name has been living in China since 2017 I live this way she was
kicked out of a home without any explanation and just like any other
person in a foreign country the embassy is usually the next resort
for her it was the Kenyan Embassy and didn't have a place to go I had to sleep
outside yes I did sleep outside she reached a dead end after two days of
sleeping outside the embassy a situation that many like her from other African
nations have found themselves in this video shows Chinese police officers
escorting people of African descent from a place they had set apart for
themselves I know of two pregnant ladies one is 8 months pregnant
6 months pregnant they cannot access hospital the LA Times actually spoke to
a number of Africans in Guangzhou who were suffering under the order several
of them said that they actually supported China's beverage bug control
measures and were of course willing to be tested and quarantined
however they felt hurt by the evictions the police harassment and of course
being treated like criminals Jason a Nigerian trader who was evicted from his
home described how police had recently chased a group of about 50 displaced
Africans through the streets we are many that night because we don't have a house
so if they see us in the street they push us and say to go go where we say we
don't have a house some people don't have a hotel they're done with
quarantine but not allowed to enter hotels again so we walk on the road
Kevin a 29 year old student from Burundi who has been in Guangzhou for five years
said he'd never felt discriminated against until a couple of weeks ago when
his entire dormitory home to many African students was put under forced
quarantine this is despite all of them testing negative for the beverage bug
and in another incident as reported by CNN which sometimes does good journalism
believe it or not Nigerian trader nan so whose name has been changed to protect
his identity stated that he and his girlfriend got a message from their
landlord at 7:00 p.m. on WeChat which is a Chinese messaging app now the message
said that they were required to vacate their flat by 8:00 p.m. this is despite
him having paid the rent up until September with two months deposited non
so told his landlord that he couldn't vacate the premises in an hour
however at 10:00 p.m. his landlord came to the flat and cut off the water and
electricity and gave new reason when nonso asked why he was doing it Nancy
then called the police who thankfully allowed him and his girlfriend to remain
in their apartment for the night but in the morning the landlord returned with a
different officer who said that he had to leave since then nonso has struggled
to find a new apartment to rent stating he and his girlfriend have contacted a
number of agents but none of them are leasing two black foreigners however
it's not just forced quarantine mask testing and homelessness that Africans
in Guangzhou are facing they are also being refused entry into restaurants and
stores this first came to the world's attention when this video made the
rounds on Twitter of a McDonald's displaying a sign stating that black
people are no welcome in that establishment for the
sake of public health when the McDonald's head honchos heard about this
they apologized profusely he closed the store set the staff up for more cultural
training and said the behavior was not in line with McDonald's inclusive values
however that's not the only incident Africans have also been refused entry to
other venues as well such as shopping malls and supermarkets
if you come from Africa country you can't write but I live in China for 20
years and they have already get made tight and everything we can return at 28
now the Chinese Communist Party has denied allegations of racism of course
stating that Africans in Guangzhou are not being unfairly targeted foreign
ministry spokesman Xiao Li Jean asserted that the Chinese government treats all
foreign personnel in China equally opposes any differential practices
targeting specific groups of people and has zero tolerance for discriminatory
words and deeds this was reiterated in China's english-language state-funded
publication the Global Times which stated that the outcry was a Western
trap designed to stir enmity Chinese analysts said that twisted reports were
stoking a long existing controversy of Africans in Guangzhou to a new high and
urged the local governments to be more transparent and to respond to
controversies in a timely manner to avoid the issue being exploited by the
West to damage China Africa relations yeah right the situation for black
people in Guangzhou has got so heinous that the US Consul General in the city
advised African Americans who have no connection at all with the African
continent to avoid the area because of the way any one of African appearance is
being treated as for the Global Times insisting that the commentary is a
Western trap to stir enmity it's a bit hard to argue that when most of the
press relating to the issue actually came from outlets in African nations not
Western nations in addition Eric Olander who's the managing editor of the China
Africa project website and podcast rightly pointed out that
China's Communist Party was having a bit of a hard time responding to the issue
because their usual tactics of dismissing allegations as rumors like
they did with the allegations made by beverage bug whistleblowers in December
tend not to hold up in the face of video and photographic evidence on social
media of which there is much ultimately this is a really important issue and it
is not yet being talked about enough in the Western press in the same way that
Chinese people living in the West should not be vilified or discriminated against
as a result of the beverage bug neither should black people living in China
whether in Guangzhou or anywhere else the question is why are the virulent
so-called anti-racists in the West calling out one set of racism but not
the other if you liked that video please remember to like subscribe share leave
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