When a Sri Lankan maid complained that she had been abandoned inside a wealthy Hong Kong investment banker's home with no food, money or keys while her employer went on holiday, the case came as no surprise to Jim Rice.
In his opinion, the case of Saroja Jayasekara, 36, who claimed early this month that she ended up surviving on food handouts from neighbors and charities, typifies a widespread but hidden problem of maid abuse in the territory.
More than 300,000 women, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia, work as live-in maids for Hong Kong families, and Rice, a philosophy lecturer at the city's Lingnan University, said many are secretly abused or underpaid.
Because they know too little about the law, employers almost always get away with such abuses, said Rice, who has now written a low-cost legal guidebook to try to help downtrodden maids in the city of 6.8 million stand up for their rights.
Jayasekara's case appears strikingly similar to one that Rice himself came across some years ago and first persuaded him that the city's army of domestic helpers were in need of help themselves.
Locked in the house
"Near where I lived, there was an Indonesian woman who was locked up in her employer's house alone for a month while she went away on holiday," Rice recalled.
"She had to call friends for help just to get food," he said. "They were bringing it to her and stuffing it through the gate. She was literally locked in the house. If there had been a fire, she wouldn't have been able to get out."
Rice offered to go for help, but the maid was horrified when he suggested publicizing her case.
"She begged me, `Please don't make any trouble,'" he said, "so I didn't go to the police or the press. I observed her wishes, and eventually she got a new employer and moved. Nothing ever came of it."
"These things happen and the employee is so frightened of getting into trouble because she knows the cards are stacked against her in terms of the labor procedures," he said.
Foreign maids in Hong Kong are guaranteed a minimum monthly wage of around US$440, far more than their counterparts in Singapore, and Hong Kong has been praised by the New York-based Human Rights Watch for protecting domestic helpers' rights.
Nevertheless, Rice, who has worked with help groups providing aid to maids involved in disputes with their employers, argued that they are very much second-class citizens in legal terms.
Visas revoked
If maids are dismissed, their visas are revoked immediately, and they must leave the territory within two weeks, meaning that complaints of abuse or wrongful dismissal are rarely heard.
"Once a helper is dismissed, she has no right to be here," Rice said. "I know of cases where people have sacked their maids, packed up their suitcases, sent them to the airport, and they are on their way to Manila within a few hours of being dismissed, and they get away with that."
"I am trying to inform workers they have other options, and I think they need to hear this. It can help them enormously in terms of dealing ... with immigration officers or the police," he said.
Most maids are unaware of their right to silence if they are reported for working illegally, a widespread phenomenon in the territory and encouraged in many cases by employers who take on part-time maids.
"Some individuals have been questioned about illegal employment," Rice said, "and they have burst into tears and told all and ended up with an eight-month sentence."
"I know another woman who was aware she had the right to silence, and she shut up and she was questioned and grilled for hours and hours, and then they let her go because there was no evidence," he said.
Rice's book, entitled Take Your Rights Seriously, is being sponsored by a human-rights campaigner so it can be sold at a cover price of around US$5.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was