Chinese student targeted in ‘racially motivated’ attack in New Zealand
- The teenager was attacked by a woman carrying a metal bar while travelling on a bus in Auckland last week
The Chinese consulate in Auckland has urged the local police to investigate a “racially motivated” attack on a Chinese teenager.
The 16-year-old was attacked by an unidentified person on a bus in the city at around 9am on Friday – a public holiday to mark Matariki, the Māori New Year.
The boy has lived in New Zealand for seven years, according to The New Zealand Herald, which said he had been attacked by a woman with a metal bar.
The boy, who did not want to be named, told the newspaper “a woman started verbally abusing me and then immediately started to physically abuse me.”
The newspaper described the incident as “racially motivated” and said the woman had shouted racial slurs at the boy before attacking him, knocking out three of his teeth and damaging another two.
According to Mao Peng, an independent Chinese journalist based in Auckland who goes by the name “Portia” on X, formerly Twitter, a 75-year-old Chinese man on the bus intervened and prevented the boy from suffering further injury.