Word: hong
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...that has seen two major recessions in the past decade and where the social stigma of failing to get ahead is exacerbated by glaring income inequality, financial hardship is thought to be the root cause of such tragedies. Two years ago, a study co-authored by the University of Hong Kong and the University of Macau found that a deranged sense of compassion was common - parents killed their offspring to spare them from destitution and believed it their right to do so. "We take our children as our property," says Fernando Cheung, former head of the Hong Kong legislature...
Earlier this month, divers took to the polluted waters of Hong Kong's Rambler Channel, searching for the body of a drowned 7-year-old boy. A week earlier, the boy and his mother, a 39-year-old divorcée and welfare recipient, were seen plunging 17 meters to the sea from the Tsing Yi Bridge, near the city's container port. The mother's body was quickly retrieved, but except for a red schoolbag, there was no trace of the boy until March 4. On that day, his body was finally hauled out of the water, and Hong...
...called filicide-suicides are not a new phenomenon in East Asia, but Hong Kong's relatively high number - there have been at least 15 since the start of 2008 - has raised alarm. "Three in one month is a critical warning sign," says Paul Yip, director of the Centre for Suicide Research & Prevention in Hong Kong. In the U.S., murder-suicides predominantly involve spouses killing partners before taking their own lives. But in Hong Kong, Yip says, at least 50% of cases involve the death of a child. (See "Hong Kong Roundtable: Ten Years, Five Views...
...Cheung is particularly concerned about maternal perpetrators of filicide-suicide in Hong Kong, many of whom have been immigrants from mainland China married to local men. "These immigrant wives aren't eligible for welfare systems or public housing until they fulfill a seven-year residency requirement," says Cheung. "If their Hong Kong husband leaves them, they become stranded." Choi Sai-mui, who plunged with her son from the Tsing Yi Bridge, was one of these women. So was the woman who in 2007 tied the hands and feet of her 12-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son before...
...same question could be asked about mainland Chinese. If Hong Kong becomes democratic, presumably they'll agitate for change as well. And that could destabilize a country bent on a quiet, stable rise. Yet there's room for a small-scale democratic experiment. China's economic miracle started with a small-scale economic experiment right across the border from Hong Kong, in Shenzhen. And if China hopes to bring democratic Taiwan back into the fold, it will have to prove it can truly sustain "one country, two systems." Hong Kong could be that trial...