Hong Kong government must be sensitive to the risk of institutional racism in decision-making

Amid the outcry over officials’ careless remarks, a mandatory vaccine proposal and compulsory Covid-19 testing, the government must think carefully about its basis for targeting certain groups

Justin Bong-Kwan

Published: 6:45am, 30 May 2021

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The Hong Kong government’s Covid-19 slogan is, “Together, we fight the virus”. As Equal Opportunities Commission chairman Ricky Chu Man-kin said: “It is this sense of togetherness, not labelling and stigmatisation, that will help us put up our best fight against the virus.”

However, the singling out of foreign domestic helpers in the application of anti-pandemic measures would seem to be at odds with the government’s official stance.

Having withdrawn a mandatory Covid-19 vaccination plan for the city’s foreign domestic workers, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has ordered all unvaccinated domestic helpers to undergo a second round of compulsory tests by May 30.

Even though the first round of tests yielded only three positive cases, Lam maintains that the second round is a necessary precaution against “infectious Covid-19 variants in the community”. On what basis is the government singling out domestic helpers?

Labour minister Dr Law Chi-kwong has described foreign domestic workers as a “high-risk group”. He said at a press briefing: “They mainly hang out with their friends during their holidays. If they are infected, that can likely lead to cross-family infections.”

Unless Law is suggesting that only domestic helpers socialise on their days off, he is simply describing behaviour that is equally common among the rest of the city’s inhabitants. Indeed, this ill-conceived justification for discriminatory policy is untenable and unconvincing.

Such a sweeping generalisation about an entire community is a glaring example of how prejudices can shape decision-making.

Rather than formulating policies based on an objective assessment of the prevailing public health situation, the government is arguably subjecting foreign domestic helpers to differential treatment based on prejudicial assumptions about their cultural habits and practices.

Foreign domestic helpers petition against new rules mandating blanket Covid-19 testing, on Chater Road in Central on May 1. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Understandably, Philippine foreign affairs secretary Teodoro Locsin Jnr criticised the subsequently withdrawn push for mandatory vaccination of foreign domestic helpers, saying it “smacks of discrimination”. Unesco’s Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice clearly states that: “Racism includes racist ideologies, prejudiced attitudes, discriminatory behaviour, structural arrangements and institutionalised practices resulting in racial inequality.”

There is nothing to suggest that the government’s measures are meant to be intentionally vexatious for foreign domestic helpers. However, the operation of implicit biases perpetuates institutional racism.

That the government appears oblivious to the possibility paints a worrying picture of the potential for prejudices and assumptions to be normalised in policy.

Earlier this year, Raymond Ho Lei-ming, head of the health promotion branch at the Centre for Health Protection, linked a Covid-19 outbreak among families from ethnic minority groups to both their cultural backgrounds and social conditions. He said: “They have many family gatherings and like to gather with fellow countrymen,” and “like to share food, smoke, drink alcohol and chat together. If it is without masks, the risk is high.”

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In 2018, lawmaker Eunice Yung Hoi-yan said the city’s “environmental hygiene” was negatively affected by the presence of foreign domestic helpers in public places during holidays, remarks for which she has apologised.

Such remarks reveal a problematic lack of cultural sensitivity and awareness that result in an unconscious bias against people of different racial and cultural backgrounds.

Ironically, it was the Chinese community that was on the receiving end of the colonial government’s prejudicial attitude during the 1894 Hong Kong plague. In the annual report on Hong Kong for that year, governor Sir William Robinson described Chinese people as “[e]ducated to unsanitary habits, and accustomed from infancy to herd together … they were quite content to die like sheep, spreading disease around them”.

To take issue with Robinson’s statement without seeing the folly of the current government’s reasoning behind its treatment of foreign domestic helpers is the pot calling the kettle black.

Official connivance in reinforcing racial stereotypes serves to perpetuate existing inequalities. As such, the government must increase its awareness of prejudicial attitudes that may be playing out in decision-making.

While the government’s measures may not be intended to be discriminatory, it needs to take responsibility for identifying the biased narratives that lead to such inequitable structural arrangements and outcomes.

Justin Bong-Kwan is a practising barrister and a freelance writer based in Hong Kong