Biden urged to pause and review China Initiative for racial profiling
- Advocacy groups add their voices to nearly 100 lawmakers who say the programme unfairly targets Asian-Americans based on race and ethnicity
- The initiative was established to investigate threats to national security and has charged scores of scientists and scholars
The US government recently dropped a number of cases because of lack of evidence and that has led to an increasing outcry that the investigations into these scientists and researchers were based on their being Chinese or from other Asian countries.
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The Initiative “subjects Asian-American and Asian immigrant scientists and others – particularly those of Chinese descent – to racial profiling, surveillance and wrongful prosecutions, where no evidence of economic espionage or trade secret theft exists,” the letter said.
“We believe you should pause the initiative’s work, pending the results of an independent review to determine whether it unfairly targeted individuals based on their race, ethnicity, or ancestry,” the groups said.
The letter followed a meeting two weeks ago of AAPI community leaders, Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss the rise in anti-Asian sentiment. It also came on the heels of a group of nearly 100 senators and House representatives urging attorney general Merrick Garland to investigate the China Initiative programme.
In a letter to Garland last month, the lawmakers said they were “deeply troubled” about whether the programme had been used to target people based on their race, ethnicity, or national origin.
