Word: honge
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...Wong sits in a converted warehouse in Tai Kok Tsui, a remote western corner of Kowloon. It's the office of Hong Kong Unison, the organization she founded in 2001 geared to defend the rights of minorities. Initially, Wong had precious little funding and had to scavenge for furniture to outfit the place. She now has backing from a few private donors as well as the international NGO Oxfam, but times are still lean. An array of colorful drapes liven up the space, while a staff of local Chinese and South Asian volunteers busy about. Wong is a blur...
...financial hub, Hong Kong draws in tens of thousands of well-heeled Western expats as well as a modicum of Asian professionals who indulge in the fine dining and luxury malls ubiquitous in Asia's self-professed "world city." But affluent people run up against prejudice too, if they are dark-skinned. Stories of everyday discrimination are legion and often banal in their predictability: from being denied service in a bar or being unable to lease an apartment of one's choice and means. Hong Kong police practice racial profiling, routinely checking IDs of South Asians and sometimes frisking them...
...Countering both widespread cultural biases and an indifferent government has been an uphill battle. After nearly a decade of campaigning by activists, with Wong in the forefront, Hong Kong's government in July 2008 put into effect its first anti-racial-discrimination legislation, which in theory allows individual residents to take action against businesses and employers that have discriminated against them because of their skin color. But the law is difficult to enforce and, unlike other ordinances covering gender and disability, exempts many government bodies. A U.N. committee on eliminating racial discrimination, based in Geneva, voiced concerns over...
...runs clinics with poor South Asian households, instructing them on everything from how to fill out official forms to how to stand up to bullying police officers ("Speak in a British accent," she advises). She has lectured at police academies "that not every South Asian is a potential criminal." Hong Kong Unison is also targeting the next generation of Hong Kongers, reaching out to schools with workshops that teach both local Chinese and ethnic minorities values of diversity and tolerance. "No one is born racist," says Wong. "Discrimination is learned...
...hopes that, bit by bit, attitudes will change and Hong Kong's minorities get the fair shake they deserve. "All I want," Wong says, "is for this city to be the truly international place it claims...