Photo：Justice for Erwiana and All Migrant Domestic Workers Committee
In Hong Kong, the case of Erwiana has finally come to an end. On February 27, the judge sentenced her to 6 years of jail and HK$15,000 fine, after she was found guilty of 18 charges including physical assault. As the case has been publicized around the world in major media, the Hong Kong system of immigrant domestic work has been also reported on in detail and strongly criticized for the slave-like and vulnerable conditions faced by many domestic workers.
In social media, many Hong Kong citizens have strongly criticized the employer, housewife Law Wan Tung, who physically abused and neglected her young domestic worker Erwiana severely. Many agree that she should be punished, and some even think that 6 years’ jail time and $15,000 fine is not enough punishment.
For those who really think that Hong Kong should not face repeated incidents like this, the bigger question is, what is the Hong Kong government concretely doing to ensure the workers’ safety? This is an important question. The strength, persistence and social support of Erwiana during her case is exceptional; and many others facing similar abuses would never be able to achieve justice, in the face of the many deterrents that exist in Hong Kong such as lack of shelter and ban on working while pursuing a legal case. How often can we pretend to be shocked, when it happens over and over again? How can we hide from the fact that the abuses are systematic, as long as our policies remain unchanged?
Despite recent prominent cases of domestic worker abuse, like that of the abused Indonesian worker Kartika in 2012, in fact the Hong Kong government policies on domestic workers have become even more restrictive. In July 2012, the Hong Kong government did greater inspection of domestic worker job changes, banning those considered to be changing “too frequently.” In January of this year, the Immigration Department sent a group of officers to arrest live-out workers and employers in several parts of Hong Kong, to crack down on the live-in rule, which had not been monitored much in the past.
In short, while it was being strongly criticized for severe abuses of domestic workers, the Hong Kong government did not do more to protect workers; rather, it took steps that put even greater power in the hands of employers, to restrict the movements and freedom of their workers. Why?
For example, one of the simplest and least radical changes requested by domestic worker rights advocates to improve workers’ safety, is simply a restoration of the option of live-out by mutual agreement of the employer and domestic worker (which existed before 2003). Even the judge in the case stated that the abuses were avoidable if domestic workers could live out.
Yet some employer groups have expressed opposition to legalizing live-out– claiming reasons such as the need to have the domestic workers working until late to accommodate late-working parents, and, significantly (as it shows chauvinistic attitudes which we condemn in India), also, the need to limit workers from meeting men and getting pregnant. In short, one big explanation for the Hong Kong government’s inaction is apparently the intention of pleasing or supporting employers, who are the permanent citizens of Hong Kong, the workforce of Hong Kong. Should Hong Kong citizens be grateful? Is this necessary? Should we keep providing workers to employers, and leave them alone behind closed doors to “be good” without any oversight?
Abuses arise from power inequality, and from the silent acceptance of society
Lately Hong Kong social media have also been reacting with outrage at the news of the man Mukesh Singh, who gang-raped a woman and caused her death. Both he and his lawyer expressed no remorse, but placed responsibility on her for being raped, because of her clothes and being out late at night. The shamelessness and total lack of remorse of the rapist and murderer are shocking. Yet the statements made by him and his lawyer about the responsibility of women themselves to not go out at night to avoid being raped, are not a completely unfamiliar concept in Hong Kong. After reporting on an increase in rapes in Hong Kong, Lai Tung-kwok, Hong Kong’s secretary for security, had advised that, to avoid getting raped, “…young ladies should not drink too much.”
If we really care about “violence against women” we should go a step further and examine our own thoughts and our own society – and pray that we never have such a horrible crime or criminal in our own city. We should ask ourselves: does our condemnation of this man reflect Hong Kong people’s superior attitude towards Indians, which is prevalent in Hong Kong? Are we imagining that our society as a whole is not as brutal and backward as Indian society? Second, are our general attitudes toward women, and about rape, really so advanced?
In Hong Kong, rape and sexual assault are still serious problems for women.
One in seven women experiences sexual violence in Hong Kong, according to a 2013 survey conducted by the Women's Coalition on Equal Opportunity. The survey also found that only 12.9 per cent of victims of sexual violence reported the incident to police. Mistrust of police was given as a reason for the dramatic drop in case reporting, in the first half of 2014; this mistrust is surely higher since the umbrella movement. Hong Kong has been singled out by the United Nations as particularly lacking support for female victims of violence. There is only a single rape victim shelter. There are no domestic worker shelters funded by the Hong Kong government, despite the fact that abused workers usually lose their residence and income when they sue their abuser.
Hong Kong, in other words, is not a place where women are truly free from sexual violence. What is the root of sexual violence? Like other forms of violence, it is made possible by a severe inequality of power.
Using legal measures to punish those who rape is a necessary but incomplete measure to stop rapes; what is ultimately needed is to address the substantive equality among the sexes - real power to escape from abuse, make free choices without stigma. As long as a woman is made dependent on another for all her survival needs, how can she be truly free?
Like rape, the physical and other abuses committed by Hong Kong employers against their domestic workers are a reflection of not only their individual sickness or evil, but the fatal combination of their individual abusive tendency with the huge inequality of power between them and their workers – a power imbalance which is confirmed and accepted by our society, because of the workers' low status as “mere women” who do “mere domestic work”, and their status as non-permanent citizens, from a country we regard as poorer and inferior.
The ugliness of rape – as well as the ugliness of domestic worker abuse – will end when we truly believe in, and implement in our social policies, the true equality of all human beings – women or men, local or migrant. Maintaining the deep inequality effectively makes those with power more likely to abuse the weak.
Fighting to end domestic worker abuses should not be the work of Erwiana alone, nor even of only activists, or only domestic workers. That would be equivalent to telling raped women they should have saved themselves.
The root of abuse is deep power inequality. Toss away all the reasons given to excuse domestic workers’ inequality in Hong Kong – that is how we can begin to end the abuses.