Category Archives : Blog


BLOG – HK Helpers Campaign Recommends Two Must-Read Articles

HK Helpers Campaign commends the South China Morning Post team behind the new multimedia project A maid’s tale: The story of one woman’s struggle to become a domestic helper.’

What Hong Kong’s domestic worker community go through is rarely documentary so comprehensively. This first-rate piece of journalism tells the story from start-to-finish.

Reporting
Kristine Servando

Video and reporting
Robin Fall

Editing
Alex Millson
Patrick Boehler


EDITORIAL – Erwiana is Not An Isolated Case, It’s The Tip of the Iceberg

As featured in the South China Morning Post.

The former employer of Erwiana Sulistyaningsih was convicted in the District Court on Tuesday of a multitude of violent crimes that left the Indonesian domestic helper a shell of her former self. The physical and psychological abuse she endured was horrific. She had little left in terms of her physical integrity and fought hard to hold onto her humanity.

Yet, since Erwiana’s case came to light barely a year ago, the Hong Kong government has taken little to no action to constructively address the inequities, discrimination and risks that foreign domestic helpers face.

The government continues to hold to the status quo position, arguing that the prevailing policies, legislation, administration and due diligence practices do not require any real change. Erwiana’s case exposed blatant shortcomings of the system, which regulates and supposedly protects foreign domestic helpers. And yet the government has been reluctant to take concrete steps to provide greater protection.

It is apparent that the government has treated Erwiana’s case as a one-off incident, a statistical outlier. It apparently continues to fail to recognise that Erwiana’s case is one of a multitude of cases of abuse of varying degrees suffered by foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong. Such abuses include non-payment or partial payment of wages, denial of statutory holidays, psychological abuse, intimidation, and acts of violence, including sexual violence.

An Amnesty International report published in late 2013 found that almost 60 per cent of all foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong were subjected to verbal abuse by their employers. Almost 20 per cent suffered violence at the hands of their employers and, in 2014, the Equal Opportunities Commission found that 6.5 per cent suffered sexual abuse.


INTERVIEW – ‘No One is Just a Worker’: Exclusive Interview with Author Nicole Constable on Hong Kong’s Domestic Workers

Dr. Nicole Constable, the author of ‘Born out of Place’ and ‘Maid to Order in Hong Kong’, shares her research on Hong Kong’s domestic workers. She discusses their struggles to maintain a balance between family life and work, the decision some domestic workers make to work illegally in Hong Kong, and the social exclusion and discrimination they often face.  

Dr. Nicole Constable

Dr. Nicole Constable

HK Helpers: A premise of your book is how difficult it is for domestic workers to be both a good worker and a good wife/mother/daughter. How does the requirement that domestic workers ‘live-in’ affect the family life of domestic workers even when they are already far from home?

Nicole Constable: It depends a lot on the conditions of the live in situation. If the situation is good and the worker has time off and privacy and enough hours to sleep and the ability to keep in touch with a family back home, it sometimes isn’t too bad – especially if she is being paid her legal salary. If she has, in the worst situation, no privacy and is not allowed to use a phone or contact her children or spouse during the week, it can be a serious problem for them. It means they don’t have the same support network and they are not as happy as they would be as workers if they were able to live out or have more privacy and time to themselves.

If they were able to live out, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem because they can keep in touch with family members regularly on their own, without someone overhearing what they’re saying or misinterpreting their tone of voice. The contact with people back home is such an important source of support and pleasure and the well-being of workers that if they were able to have live out or have better conditions as live-in, they would better balance the life of being a worker and still being a family member at home.

The problem is, often they are expected to be workers 24-7 or be on call as workers 24-7 and the live in situation perpetuates that kind of set-up. If they were allowed to live out, I think potentially they would be much better and much happier workers that have more balanced lives.

HKH: Did the women you interviewed complain about their living conditions in Hong Kong?

NC: My earlier book, Maid to Order in Hong Kong, was based partly on interviews with them and speaking with women at the Mission for Migrant workers and I heard many, many, many complaints about work conditions and housing conditions and I saw many pictures of very unpleasant places where people were forced to sleep. I kept in touch with many different organizations and people in the wider domestic worker community that had a lot of access to what I would consider very inappropriate housing.


BLOG – ‘Live-in’ Rule Hurts Helpers & Employers 8

This week, 20 immigration officers visited Ma Wan village on Park Island to arrest four domestic workers, whose crime was living under a different roof than their employers.

Two employers of one of the women were also arrested and later released on bail. The male employer told the South China Morning Post: “Some employers that have a live-in nanny make them work up to 18 hours a day and some I know don’t even get a day off.”

An immigration officer reported that the four women were arrested on suspicion of making false representations to an immigration officer. Under clause three of the standard employment contract, both parties agree that the domestic worker will live at the same premises as the employer.

According to the Hong Kong Labour Department, infringing clause three is akin to making a false representation to an immigration officer, and carries a maximum punishment of $150,000 in fines and 14 years in prison. Domestic workers accused of the same could be black-listed and deported. By contrast, in the recent trial against a local Hong Kong employer for grievous bodily harm with intent, the accused faces a maximum jail time of seven years if found guilty.


Accused Employer Was Allowed to Hire Erwiana Despite Earlier Complaints

A previous employee of the woman on trial for allegedly torturing Indonesian helper Erwiana Sulistyaningsih has testified that Law Wan-tung was allowed to hire new domestic workers despite previous complaints of abuse.

A 'Justice for Erwiana' rally last March.

A ‘Justice for Erwiana’ rally last March.

Tutik Lestari Ningsih worked for Law in her Tai Kok Tsui home for almost a year in 2010. She told the court that she was repeatedly slapped and kicked in the thighs by the defendant and that she was not the first of Law’s employees to suffer physical assault.

“She had done such things to previous helpers,” she said.

Tutik claims her employment agency told her of Law’s reputation when she complained of the abuse. Tutik also said that the agent spoke of how Law would struggle to find another domestic worker because she changed them so frequently.


NEWS – Despite UN Pressure, HK Refuses to Change Discriminatory Policies

The treatment of migrant domestic workers was a major concern in the UN’s recent consultation with Hong Kong on the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which took place in early November.

Though CEDAW was extended to Hong Kong in 1996 while it was still under British rule, the People’s Republic of China has entered seven reservations concerning the implementation of CEDAW in Hong Kong due to ‘special circumstances.’ One such reservation regards Article 11 (2) on maternal care.

A delegation of nine representatives from Hong Kong under Permanent Secretary Annie Tam attended the 59th CEDAW consultation in Geneva from October 20th to November 7th.

A decade of condemnation from international bodies 


APPEAL – Writer? Translator? Lobbyist? Volunteer for HK Helpers Campaign 1

HK Helpers Campaign VolunteerHK Helpers Campaign is a successful and much-needed platform fighting for the rights of domestic workers in Hong Kong. To continue our work, our multimedia advocacy and legal project needs more hands on deck.

Keeping up momentum

  • Over the past nine months, our campaign has worked with dozens of journalists and media outlets to raise awareness of the challenges domestic workers face.
  • Professional photographers and videographers have linked with us to help shape the debate and shine a more positive light on the local helper community.
  • Our campaign has been featured on CNN and in the Wall Street Journal, Quartz, the Guardian, the South China Morning Post and others.
  • Our website is a respected hub for breaking news, research and events information whilst our legal team is assembling cases to challenge the law.
  • We are now hosting support information for the community in six different languages.
  • This summer, we were officially registered as a society and began work on our Chinese website launch.
HK Helpers Campaign 2013-2014

HK Helpers Campaign 2013-2014

Volunteer appeal


BLOG – When Indonesian Domestic Workers Sue

Dr Carol Tan is Reader in Law at SOAS in London where she teaches a course on migrant labour and the law and where she was also previously Chair of the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies. Calling upon extensive research and interviews of domestic workers, Dr Tan looks at how despite the fact that breaches of contract are common, a domestic worker wishing to find redress faces many challenges and only some domestic workers manage to sue their employers. She discusses what we can learn about enforcing rights from looking at the stories of how domestic workers became litigants. Two of her papers can be found on our resources page.


OP-ED – Helpers Set Up Own Libraries As Gov’t Ignores HK’s Biggest Minorities

A South China Morning Post article last week reported Hong Kong people are falling out of love with city libraries. The rampant usage of smartphones was cited for the decline in book rentals. Library officials lamented the decreasing figures and commentators criticised the cities reading culture, which has been ‘in decline for years’. On the other hand, domestic workers have been busy setting up unofficial mobile libraries across the city because the Hong Kong libraries don’t cater for their needs.

libraries ignore minorities

Since 2009, the department has expanded its library collection from 12.5 million books and multimedia materials to 13.1 million. Yet, the number of books rented fell 6.2 million over the past five years, from 61.7 million in 2009 to 55.5 million last year. A spokesperson for the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, which manages the public libraries told the SCMP that “professional judgement was exercised in the acquisition of books to meet the different needs of various groups, including ethnic minorities”, and the collections remained “highly popular among readers”.


BLOG – Indonesian Migrant Workers in Hong Kong Exploited and Forgotten

Ethics in Action journal

Featured in the journal ‘Ethics in Action’

Summary of Amnesty International “Exploited for Profit, Failed by Governments” (2013). By Meredith McBride on behalf the HK Helpers Campaign and the Asian Human Rights Commission.

“I don’t think that any country or territory has a good policy on domestic migrant workers, or migrant workers in general.  I think we’ll always have to struggle to prevent this race to the bottom.” Norma Kang Muico, Report author.

Nearly six months after the release of a report condemning the widespread mistreatment of maids in Hong Kong, little has changed in the Special Administrative Region of China. In its Report, Amnesty International pinpointed the plight of domestic workers in Hong Kong as one of the most severe cases of human rights abuses in the Asian region. Because of the Indonesian government’s poorly thought-out policies and lack of oversight, domestic workers from Indonesia are particularly vulnerable to corrupt agencies, outdated laws, and abuse at the hands of their employers in Hong Kong. “Exploited for Profit, Failed by Governments” was released by Amnesty in November of 2013 in response to the continued exploitation of Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is home to over 325,000 domestic workers, nearly half of whom come from Indonesia. Migration for domestic work is an activity that benefits both sending and recipient countries. Globally, the International Labour Organization lists an official figure of 53 million people, primarily women, who are currently undertaking domestic work abroad, but claims that the actual figure is likely closer to 100 million. High levels of unemployment and underemployment at home, together with opportunities for higher wages lead many Indonesian women to pursue opportunities overseas.  According to the ILO, domestic work is one of the largest sources of employment for rural women from Indonesia. These overseas migrant workers sent home $US7.88 billion in 2013.

To prepare their report, Muico and others at Amnesty International conducted interviews with 97 Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong and Indonesia during 2012 and 2013. The researchers specifically sought women who had worked in Hong Kong in the previous five years and had experienced problems during their tenure. The group was chosen in order to better understand the systematic patterns of abuse facing Indonesian women in Hong Kong and the complicit policies of both countries.