http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4990
Asia News Network
AFTER more than a decade of debate, a controversial anti-racism bill has been unanimously approved by legislators in Hong Kong.
This could be good news for non-Chinese Hong Kongers like the Arcilla family.
Originally from the Philippines, the Arcillas have called Hong Kong home for more than two decades.
All of the four Arcilla children were educated in the city after the family’s move, and both parents speak fluent English and some Cantonese, hold steady jobs and pay taxes.
Yet they face http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4973 on a daily basis. Father Ray Arcilla, 54, said he has been called “stupid and “brainless” in the course of his work as an engineer, simply because of the colour of his skin.
His 26-year-old daughter Tesa said she has met Hong Kongers who assume she is either a maid or a prostitute because she is a Filipina.
Under the new anti-racism legislation, the discrimination faced by the Arcillas could now be illegal.
The new law aims to guarantee racial equality by criminalizing “discrimination, harassment and vilification on the ground of race”.
Even so, some rights groups like Unison, which represents ethnic minorities, criticize the bill for not going far enough to protect minority rights.
Fermi Wong, the director of Unison, said it was “ridiculous” that government agencies, including the police, are exempted from the law.
From a reader: What a fine example of the enriching qualities of globalism to see a part of Red China finally catch up with the “Free World” in this important area of Orwellian speech regulation.