NEW YORK
Members of the west
African community in New York complained Wednesday that their children
were being bullied at school and their businesses were losing money
because of hysteria over Ebola.
Panic has gripped many
Americans since a Liberian citizen brought the killer virus into the
country and died on October 8 of the disease in a Texas hospital.
Two
nurses who treated him subsequently became infected, though they
recovered, and a US doctor who returned to New York from treating Ebola
patients in Guinea was diagnosed with the virus last week.
Various
US states and the Pentagon have imposed quarantine rules for people
returning from Ebola-afflicted countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone.
Health-care workers listen while US President
Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington,
DC, October 29, 2014. AFP PHOTO | BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI
The
African Advisory Council (AAC), a community group in New York, called a
news conference in the Bronx, home to one of the largest African
communities in the United States, to demand better education to end
unnecessary fear.
"I need my community to be safe but also to be protected," said the congressman for the Bronx, Jose Serrano.
Last
week, two Senegalese boys were called Ebola and assaulted at a school
in the Bronx so badly they had to go to hospital, community leaders
said.
The boys had three weeks previously moved to New
York to join their father, a cab driver who has lived in the United
States for nearly 20 years.
Their father, Ousman Drame, blamed the assault on "kids who know nothing", and said the incident stemmed from ignorance.
Serrano called the bullying of the Senegalese boys "unacceptable".
BATTLING EBOLA
US
President Barack Obama and officials in New York have repeatedly sought
to sow calm, hailing medical workers battling Ebola as heroic and
stressing that Ebola cannot be contracted through casual contact.
But
community members say pervasive ignorance and scaremongering in
sections of the media are putting their children at risk and
jeopardizing their livelihoods.
Moussa Kourouma, a taxi
driver originally from Guinea, said children from the community face a
"serious problem". Bullying and parents out at work made it easy for
them to drop out of school and drift onto the streets, he said.
As
president of a Guinea community association, he said the family of a
five-year-old boy, who tested negative for Ebola in New York on Monday,
are too frightened to return to their home in the Bronx.
He
said immigrants from the three afflicted countries were scared to go to
hospital with simple health complaints or admit their origin to
customers.
Kourouma said one customer demanded to get out of his cab when he discovered he was from Guinea.
"If you say you're from Guinea or Sierra Leone or Liberia, nobody's got time for you," he told the news conference.
"We have a serious problem, and we cannot hide it," he added.
Stephanie
Arthur, chairwoman of the civil engagement committee of the AAC, told
AFP that she had no precise number of incidents but said Ebola was
exacerbating harassment many children already face because of their
African origin.
"We must all stand up as Africans, we
must all stand up as New Yorkers, we must all stand up as Americans,"
said Charles Cooper, Bronx president of the AAC.
