Nepalese community struggles for acceptance in the city they call home

The slogan on the T-shirt says it all: "I can't keep calm because I'm an ethnic minority living in Hong Kong." A twist on the "Keep Calm And…" viral meme, it was created by Nepalis to express their sense of disenfranchisement in the city they call home.

Moreover the "minoritee", as the shirt has been dubbed, is a symbol of the community's aspirations to be accepted as an integral part of Hong Kong society.

Nepalis have an association with the city dating back to 1969-70, when Gurkha regiments were first based here. The British granted the troops and their families permanent residency in the early 1990s. Then, amid political uncertainty in the run-up to the handover in 1997, many returned to Nepal. The early 2000s, when fears had receded, saw them returning. But given difficulties in finding school places for non-Chinese-speaking minorities, many left their children behind. The lack of Chinese-language support persists, and minorities are often allocated places in so-called lower-band schools, which risks entrenching intergenerational poverty in the community.

A flawed education system is the reason Nepalis are largely typecast as relatively unskilled, blue-collar workers, says Dhiraj Gurung, a part-time school-teacher and researcher at Chinese University of Hong Kong. He recalls being asked where he was from during his early days as a master's student at the institution. "I said 'Nepal', and the next question was, 'Are you a security guard?'"

In a bid to improve education opportunities for minorities, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying announced in his February policy address that HK$200 million would be provided to schools in the next academic year to support teaching of Chinese as a second language. But although the overdue initiative is welcome, it still misses the point about ethnic minorities' education, says school liaison officer Amod Rai, one of a group of Nepalis advocating minorities' rights.

"The government is focusing on assimilation, rather than integration," Rai says. "Ethnic minorities should also be given the opportunity to learn their mother language, and their culture should be included in the school curriculum in some way, like in liberal studies or humanities," Rai says. He adds that the UN advocates mother-tongue education.