Coronavirus: crackdowns, racism and forced quarantine heighten tension for Africans in Guangzhou
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For the first time in the 16 years he has been in China, William Akuma was asked in April to leave his own home.
“They came to my house, and said every black person needs to be quarantined,” Akuma, chairman of the Cameroonian Community Guangdong, said. “I’ve been in China since the beginning of the outbreak, why should I quarantine? So I refused it.”
Authorities had imposed a blanket quarantine and monitoring measures for people from “high-risk countries”, requiring everyone from African countries to quarantine for 14 days from April 9.
As the new rules came in, there were also reports that some Africans had been evicted from their homes and hotels or were subjected to forced quarantine, even if they had no links to recent arrivals from overseas.