UN chief human rights official Michelle Bachelet asked the global community on Thursday to show solidarity with people of Asian ethnicity subject to discrimination amid an outbreak of a new coronavirus started in China.
“The coronavirus epidemic has unleashed a disturbing wave of prejudice against ethnic Chinese and East Asian people, and I ask member states to do their utmost to combat this and other forms of discrimination,” she said at a session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Governments are stepping up measures to combat an imminent global coronavirus pandemic, as the number of infections outside China has for the first time exceeded those that have occurred in the country.