World Health Organization (W.H.O.) staffers based at the organization’s Western Pacific headquarters in Manila recently accused the region’s W.H.O. chief, Takeshi Kasai, of blaming a rise in coronavirus cases in some Asian countries on their populations’ “lack of capacity due to their inferior culture, race and socioeconomic level,” the Associated Press (AP) reported Thursday.
W.H.O. staffers made the allegation “in an internal complaint filed in October [2021] and again in an email last week” that they subsequently sent to senior W.H.O. leadership according to the AP, which obtained and reviewed the documents.
The complaint alleges that Kasai, an ethnic East Asian from Japan, demonstrated racism against people native to Asian countries such as China, Malaysia, and the Philippines. China is an East Asian nation while the Philippines and Malaysia are both located in Southeast Asia.
“Kasai said repeatedly in meetings that the COVID [Chinese coronavirus] response was hampered by ‘a lack of sufficiently educated people in the Pacific,’” three members of the W.H.O.’s Chinese coronavirus response team in Asia told the AP this week.
“How many people in the Pacific have you killed so far and how many more do you want to kill further?” Kasai allegedly asked an unidentified Filipino W.H.O. staffer during a coronavirus meeting in Manila.
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