Beware drug lords targeting Hong Kong domestic helpers and asylum seekers as mules in narcotics trade
Prison chaplain wages war on criminals taking advantage of vulnerable communities in city to traffic drugs, and calls for more awareness on issue
Migrant domestic workers and asylum seekers in Hong Kong are being tricked – some through lovers they met online – into delivering or receiving parcels filled with drugs, in the latest tactic used by dealers to recruit local mules.
About a dozen domestic helpers and refugees were arrested between January and May this year after unwittingly following instructions from partners or friends, said Catholic priest Father John Wotherspoon, a prison chaplain.
“There’s been about a dozen people, most of them women, some men – Filipinos, Indonesians, Africans – [who] have been tricked to deliver or collect parcels of drugs and they’ve all been arrested for that.”
Wotherspoon said those arrested had been charged but had pleaded not guilty and were awaiting a trial date.
A barrister, Leung Chun-keung, said no bail was given “since the charge is very serious, warranting a very long term of imprisonment”.
The cases come amid a steady increase in arrests of non-ethnic Chinese people in Hong Kong for drug offences in the last four years.
Police arrested 377 non-ethnic Chinese people last year for serious drug offences, a 60 per cent increase from the 237 detained in 2014. The number was 327 in 2015 and 352 in 2016. This year’s figure could rise further as 158 people were already arrested between January and April.
Hong Kong Customs, which deals with drug trafficking, said it arrested 109 non-Chinese people in major drug cases in the first half of this year, compared with 190 in the whole of last year. Eight of the arrests this year and last year were of asylum seekers with torture claims.