Opinion | Black Lives Matter protests offer an opportunity for Hong Kong to examine police attitudes to the city’s racial minorities

Name: Black Lives Matter protests held across Asia
Uploaded: 2020-06-25T01:30:14.000Z
Duration: 3 min 13 s
Description: Black Lives Matter protests held across Asia

The 2009 police killing of a Nepalese man shocked Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities, who have long complained of racial profiling

An inquiry into institutional racism is long overdue. The government must start to remedy any racial injustices in the community

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

A protester stands in front of Hong Kong’s largest mosque, Kowloon Mosque, and holds a banner to show support for ethnic minorities last October, after a police cannon sprayed blue dye on the mosque and people outside. Photo: Raquel Carvalho

Justin Bong-Kwan

Published: 9:30am, 25 Jun 2020Updated: 9:40am, 25 Jun 2020

On June 7, demonstrators marched to the US Consulate in Hong Kong in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. The movement is a protest over police brutality against African Americans and was sparked by the recent death of George Floyd.

While some may perceive the movement as a response to an American problem, racial inequality is not unique to any particular part of the world. Having said that, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison stirred up controversy when he remarked that “There's no need to import things happening in other countries here to Australia,” since “Australia is not the United States”.

In these circumstances, is it possible that Hong Kong has its own systemic injustices to address? In particular, do the city’s ethnic minorities experience racial discrimination from the police?

Racial inequality is a multifaceted issue, and its operation and impact are largely contextual. It follows that an effective anti-discrimination strategy requires gaining a thorough understanding of how racial inequality affects the target community. Otherwise, attempts at tackling potential problems would be mere shots in the dark.

There must be more than a peripheral survey of the treatment of ethnic minorities in policing. For instance, the 1999 Macpherson Report in Britain was commissioned to inquire into matters arising from how the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence was handled. It concluded that institutional racism extended beyond the police service, and that such collective failure was apparent in Britain’s criminal justice system.

03:13

Black Lives Matter protests held across Asia

Inquiries such as the Macpherson Report are vital in identifying discriminatory practices that may exist. Unfortunately, there has not been a similar undertaking in the context of Hong Kong.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x