Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
Ethnic Minorities in Hong Kong Policies Recommendation
1st September 2022
Prepared for: Chief Executive of Hong Kong, John Lee
Prepared by: Shalini Mahtani, Chief Executive Officer of The Zubin Foundation
mummy@zubinfoundation.org
Background
• By ethnic minorities we mean non-Chinese, and excluding the Whites and Mixed populations, the overall ethnic minority population comprises Hong Kong Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalis, and Filipinos.
• Many of the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong were born or grew up here. Hong Kong is their home. They are not going anywhere. Many take offence to the term “ethnic minority,” especially the youth. They prefer to be called Hong Kong people and see themselves as locals.
• Some families have been here since the late 1800’s and have contributed to Hong Kong over decades. They have been champions of industry and professions, but are also overly represented in elementary occupations.
• The ethnic minority population is growing faster than any other population in Hong Kong and this is an important talent pool for Hong Kong, which is suffering from an ageing population and a dwindling dependency ratio.
• The ethnic minority population remains the most significant affected population by poverty, particularly children. As per the 2016 Poverty Report, one-third of ethnic minority children live in poverty.
Pre-amble
• Ethnic minorities have been an important policy area since at least 2010, 2011
• The ethnic minority population has been clearly identified as an important part of Hong Kong
• Policies that have included ethnic minorities have included:
o Learning Chinese support at schools
o Kindergarten support
o Special education needs assistance
o Community integration and support
o Equal opportunities awareness
o Enhancing advisory and statutory bodies with ethnic minorities who
Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
have the required skills
Policy Recommendations
Public Education:
1.1 Recognising ethnic minorities as an intrinsic part of Hong Kong should be the number one policy focus in this area.
1.2 Ethnic minorities face discrimination every day, in general living in Hong Kong: from travelling on public transport, renting homes, to playing in the playground at public schools.
1.3 Enhancing Hong Kong’s position as an international hub for the Greater Bay Area (GBA) and internationally involves promoting racial harmony, not just in words, but through active inclusion of ethnic minorities, as a face of Hong Kong also. The administration has an opportunity to set the tone for Hong Kong as an inclusive city to retain its competitiveness status among the GBA.
1.4 Including ethnic minorities alongside their Chinese counterparts as the face of Hong Kong. This is an advantage of Hong Kong. Singapore is a case in point and lessons can be learned from them.
Mental Health:
2.1 Ethnic minorities do not have access to the same mental health services as their Chinese counterparts in the public sector. This is because most of the mental health professionals in the public sector are Chinese and do not speak minority languages or have a fundamental understanding of minority cultures. Both language and cultural understanding are imperative for the provision of effective mental health care.
2.2 Many issues that trigger ethnic minorities’ mental health problems tie in with their cultural identity. Examples of issues include family conflicts caused by different expectations between traditional parents and youths who were brought up in a more cosmopolitan environment; forced or arranged marriage, trauma from abuse and domestic violence in the family.
2.3 Language barriers and lack of cultural understanding have been major obstacles for ethnic minorities seeking professional help.
Special Needs of Children: (SEN)
Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
Many youths suffer from moderate to very severe risk of suicide. There is simply no public assistance that is appropriate for them.
2.4 Given the unique difficulties and obstacles that ethnic minorities are facing, and these issues will likely grow and affect more ethnic minorities, the government needs to develop a mental health strategy for ethnic minorities
2.5 The government needs to adopt an assertive approach to encourage universities to lower the barrier of entry for ethnic minorities to enter mental health related services (e.g. social work, nursing, psychology, counselling). There are less than a handful of ethnic minorities, each year, who study these subjects across Hong Kong, and we do not have the supply of ethnic minority professionals who have cultural and language skills to address the mental health problems in the community. Ethnic minority applicants who meet the required grades are repeatedly turned down from such programmes.
2.6 Dedicated public resources would be required to support the mental health of ethnic minorities using civil society organisations to hire qualified ethnic minority mental health professionals.
2.7 Chinese-speaking professionals (e.g., teachers, doctors, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists) need to undertake cultural sensitivity training to identify problems in the ethnic minority community
2.8 In the short term, as an assistive measure, mental healthrelated organisations/bodies should be encouraged to hire ethnic minority peer ambassadors (who need to go through a specific training module, including basic mental health, confidentiality, communication, etc.) to support and care for ethnic minorities in need
3.1 There is a growing number of children with special education needs (SEN) in Hong Kong. There is no research currently on the growth of this population, but anecdotal data shows us that particularly in the Nepalese and Pakistani communities SEN
Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
numbers are disproportionally high. This may be due to interfamily marriage over generations, an insufficient understanding of maternal care and a lack of understanding on the consequences of the use of drugs in vitro.
3.2 The waiting list for 0- to 6-year-olds, English speaker SEN children to receive government support for treatment interventions is longer than their Chinese counterparts. A child misses out on what health practitioners call their “golden period,” from 0 to 6 years. The golden period is the time when marginal benefits from treatment and therapies have the most impact on the child. By delaying the time that the child receives such treatments, the child is not able to receive the same improvement as if s/he had received it at a younger age. In addition, the public expenditure is much larger as we delay treatment because many more interventions are required to be provided to get to the same or lower outcomes. Early interventions are key.
3.3 The administration should outsource or work in partnership with local NGOs to ensure timely and appropriate interventions for ethnic minority children in the 0-6 age cohort.
3.4 Ethnic minority children above age 6 in public school tend not to be put forward for assessments at the same time as their Chinese counterparts. This is because there is inadequate training for teachers in public schools and educational psychologists People lacking cultural sensitivity sense would generally put the ethnic minority child’s behaviour down to being “naughty,” or cite language learning difficulties. Teachers, teaching supporting staff and educational psychologists require training on the ethnic minorities with SEN children, particularly because this population is growing.
3.5 Parents with SEN children have difficulties in supporting the children at home- especially because family sizes tend to be larger Many are less educated; they do not have SEN knowledge and any related content needs to be taught in a digestible way and in their mother languages. In addition, deep-rooted cultural myths need to
Housing:
Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
be addressed appropriately.
3.6 EM Parents with SEN children are struggling to find Special Schools in the public sector because their children do not speak Cantonese. All 60 Special Schools in Hong Kong teach in Cantonese and there are no specific materials in English.
3.7 There is only one Special Need School for English speakers, Sarah Roe Jockey Club. It is private, very expensive, and has a very long waiting list.
3.8 More pressure needs to be on direct subsidy scheme schools (DSS), private and international schools, which teach in English and mask their discrimination against SEN children in the admissions process. Many SEN children are highly functional and smart and should be given reasonable accommodations, so that they are fully integrated into such schools.
3.10 post-secondary school, there are little or no publicly funded programmes, such as jobs or vocational skills training in English for students/adults with SEN For English speakers with SEN in Hong Kong, these individuals often go directly to becoming comprehensive social security assistance (CSSA) recipients when many with mild and moderate SEN can be productive members of the community instead.
4.1 Private rental market. Despite the Race Discrimination Ordinance (RDO), it is still exceedingly difficult for ethnic minorities to rent accommodation. Agents and property owners alike will state that they do not wish to rent to ethnic minorities, Indians, or Pakistanis.
4.2 As a way of excluding ethnic minorities, property owners place harsher restrictions on potential tenants by asking for deposits equivalent to one year's rental and higher rental amounts.
4.3 Ethnic minorities therefore are not at liberty to choose a property that meets their criteria, but they choose a property where the property owner is tolerant of their race or religion.
Public Schools:
Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
4.4 Because ethnic minorities have larger family sizes and are growing in number, they tend to wait for a much longer time than the average of 5 - 6 years for public housing. The existing waitlist for most ethnic minorities for public housing is 7 - 8 years; some have been waiting for even longer due to the lower numbers of “larger-in-size” flats that are built in newer public housing estates
5.1 Youth and young children are marginalised in public schools. They face bullying on the grounds of their skin colour. This is a common occurrence and is found in Chinese medium instruction (CMI) public schools, English medium instruction (EMI) public primary schools, secondary schools, and kindergartens.
5.2 This race based bullying is an obstacle to racial harmony in schools and is an obstacle to learning for children
5.3 Teachers in public schools are sometimes the perpetrator of common negative stereotypes. Ethnic minority children have been told that they may not study certain subjects (because of their race) at a higher level and that they may not do DSE Chinese (and instead to IGCSE, a lower standard of Chinese). In addition, some ethnic minority teachers in public schools complain about overt discrimination by the school, such as being told they may not wear their ethnic minority clothes (though professional and clean) or wear headscarves (because it will “scare” children).
5.4 The government’s commitment to enhancing racial harmony must be improved in public schools Specifically, textbooks should depict Hong Kong people from multiple ethnicities in all sorts of professions (doctors, engineers), negative stereotypes must be allayed, and mandatory training should be provided to teachers on racial harmony.
5.5 Romanisation is much needed for learning Chinese as a second language and has been delayed for no good reason. Research from Mainland China on how to learn Putonghua as second language
Civil Service:
Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
shows that romanisation (pinyin) is critical for second language learners. Also the Mainland Chinese experience shows that teaching pedagogy for second language learners must be available. Hong Kong should adopt the same approach and have a second language curriculum and pedagogy for learning Cantonese, and this should be supplemented with romanisation.
5.6 Together with 5.5 (above), grants for schools (in kindergarten, primary and secondary) to support ethnic minorities should aim at paving the way for ethnic minority students to take DSE Chinese exams (perhaps excluding the Classical Chinese part) – most do the IGCSE exam currently. Our aim is to create ethnic minority school graduates who have the same level of Chinese as their Chinese counterparts, so they can access jobs and opportunities and have social mobility.
6.1 The police force is now employing ethnic minorities for certain positions, and this should be commended. This should also continue and into other areas of the civil service.
6.2 Police and other front line civil servants should be encouraged to take cultural sensitivity training so that they are better able to understand their issues and needs.
Advisory and Statutory Bodies:
7.1 The past administration must be commended for enhancing the numbers of ethnic minorities on advisory and statutory bodies (ASBs). Their aim has been to include the voice of ethnic minorities in decision-making across the various functions of the administration. We hope that the current administration will also continue to onboard qualified ethnic minorities onto ASBs. At this point, are not recommended a target percentage of ethnic minorities on ASBs, as is the case for women at 35%.
7.2 We recommend that the CE of HKSAR, continue to encourage bureaux and departments to onboard ethnic minority candidates alongside Chinese counterparts for all positions. The Diversity List produced by The Zubin Foundation has been a useful resource of the government to identify eligible candidates.
Steering Committee for Ethnic Minorities
Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
7.3 We recommend that all ASBs have at least one member of the ethnic minority community on them to include the voice, background, perspective and experiences of the ethnic minority community, an integral part of Hong Kong.
8.1 We commend the previous administration for establishing a cross bureau and department committee to address the issues pertaining to ethnic minorities and we ask that the current administration continue this.
8.2 We recommend bringing on ethnic minority experts onto this committee to advise the government at a high level and provide insights and perspective.
9.1 Forced marriage is not uncommon in some local Hong Kong communities. Girls are engaged to be married as children and are coerced to marry, sometimes before 18. Sometimes too, they are tricked into marrying when they are taken to their ancestral home abroad under the pretext of a holiday.
9.2 Forced marriage should be treated as a crime and Hong Kong residents (parents of the girls) should be charged accordingly. The police force and the Immigration Department should be work closely together to investigate and act. E.g. Any siblings of the victims/potential victims under the Child Protection Registry should be required for a separate conversation with a female duty officer at the customs before leaving Hong Kong to ensure their safety.
9.3 Furthermore, Hong Kong ethnic minority girls are forced into engagements to marry or forced to marry. Forced marriage should be clearly mentioned and covered under child abuse (either separate it as a type of abuse or under psychological abuse).
Parents, mostly fathers, use emotional and psychological abuse to coerce their children to marry or get engaged, sometimes threatening to kill them, remove their siblings from school in Hong