A 21-year-old white man reportedly carried out three shootings Tuesday at spa businesses in Atlanta, Georgia, killing eight people, including six women of Asian descent.
In his confession to the police, he said he was "addicted to sex" and blamed those locals for fomenting his vice.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said the businesses were not under police surveillance: "As far as we know in Atlanta, these are businesses that were operating legally."
["They have shooted me". This Latino called his wife for help before he passed out]
Although researchers have so far avoided calling the crime a racist hate crime, experts say the case may be linked to the historical fetishism of which Asian women have been victims, and that it has made them especially vulnerable to sexual violence.
"Racism, misogyny and violence are very intertwined," said Elizabeth Kim, director of operations for Restore NYC, an organization that seeks to end sex trafficking in New York.
These are the figures of attacks against the Asian community
March 18, 202103: 16
The Polaris organization analyzed more than 32,000 cases of human trafficking in 2017, of which almost a third were related to businesses disguised as massage parlors.
According to his report, there were more than 9,000 such stores in the United States, with total revenues of $ 2.5 billion annually.
"There may be women who choose to sell sex as an accompaniment or under the guise of massage therapy, but the evidence suggests that many of the women involved in the sex trade in massage parlors are victims of human trafficking," the report said.
[How racism and sexism towards Asian women influenced the Atlanta shootings that left eight dead, according to experts]
The trafficked women, Polaris says, recently arrived from China or South Korea, do not speak English, are in their 30s and 50s, many are mothers, have no higher education and are under financial pressure.
They are often
recruited under deception
, without mentioning the sexual aspect of the service.
Once in the United States, they are forced to work many times without pay or extorted and threatened.
They are victims of violence, threats, fraud and coercion.
For example, traffickers subject them with emotional manipulation or threats to call the authorities for deportation.
Yalaba Mendoza visits one of the attacked businesses in Atlanta to honor the murdered people.
However,
not all spa businesses
or massage parlors are hidden sites of human trafficking and prostitution.
In particular, businesses where Asian women work are perceived as places where sex workers are found, experts warn.
[One of the Atlanta shootings investigators posted a racist post against Asians on Facebook
"Even if [the victims] were giving non-sexual massages, this ends up being a sex work problem," said Esther K, co-director of Red Canary Song, a coalition of Chinese massage salon workers.
"Women are being seen de facto as sex workers and used as scapegoats for it," he told The Guardian newspaper.
“Removing the anti-sex work component really removes the crux of what this specific type of racism is all about: the fetishization of Asian women's bodies, the objectification of their bodies, and the assumption that Asian women are obviously going to provide Sex services in massage parlors ”, he continued,“ the combination of massage parlors and sex workers without any nuance is very specific to anti-Asian racism against Asian women ”.
Activist groups seeking the decriminalization of sex work warned that the shootings will lead to an increase in operations in establishments where sex workers work.
Because female workers fear arrest or fine during these raids, they
do not go to the police when they are victims of a crime
, making them more vulnerable to violence, experts said.
"We are really afraid that [the shooting] is being used by the police to justify more police surveillance and shutting down massage parlors," Elene Lam, director of Butterfly, an advocacy group run by Asian and migrant sex workers, said. informative website Vice News.
By decriminalizing the industry, they argue, sex workers would no longer have to work in secret, and migrant and minority women especially could access justice with less fear.
[Counterterrorism Agents Deployed in New York to Prevent Hate Attacks Against Asian People]
Alison Clancey, executive director of SWAN, an advocacy group for Asian and migrant sex workers, said police officers do not have the necessary information about the sex industry, and they do not know how to differentiate between victims of human trafficking and sex workers.
"Much of the violence that happens to immigrant sex workers is at the hands of law enforcement, so it does not surprise me that a police officer sees this unspeakable act of violence as nothing more than a 'bad day'" He said in reference to the officer who seemed to excuse the person responsible for the Atlanta shooting with his words to the press.
With information from USA Today, The Guardian, and VICE News.