HK Observer | Capital and due diligence

Robert Carroll

While much of Hong Kong’s freedom is being chipped away at, it’s heartening to see the stout application of the rule of law in several high-profile cases in the past month. In both the case of the horribly abused domestic helper Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, and the jailing of the SAR’s former Chief Secretary, Rafael Hui. and property tycoon Thomas Kwok, of Sun Hung Kai Properties, justice was surely seen to be done. While the high and mighty may expect that the law does not apply to them, these cases prove that even the head of Kong Kong’s biggest developer and the former second-in-command of the government receive no immunity from prosecution.
Given the collusion between government and property developers, and the great shockwaves that are expected to emanate from the successful prosecution of these two big fish, many of the more cynical and conspiratorially minded members of our community may have had a pleasant surprise. But don’t these incarcerations send the right message to bigwigs and to the community that we are all equal under the law, despite Hui and Kwok having the best legal defense money can buy?
Likewise, the high-handed and totally unrepentant employer and torturer of Erwiana got her just deserts by being found guilty on multiple counts, and a long prison sentence is rightfully expected.
The third high-profile recent case where the rigorous application of the rule of law was so open to scrutiny was the Lamma ferry disaster, which also saw justice being done as the skippers’ neglect was justifiably punished with jail time. However, both of the latter cases raise worrying questions. If abuse of foreign maids can reach that degree without detection, and if a half-dying girl, clearly battered and bruised, can leave without a murmur from immigration police, doesn’t this mean that there are very substantial flaws in our helper abuse preventive mechanisms? If so, as barrister Robert Tibbo argued, why is nothing being done to detect and clamp down on such shocking behavior? After all, instances of abuse of foreign maids here are quite widespread.
As Tibbo pointed out that, according to Amnesty International in 2013, 60% of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong complained of verbal abuse from employers, and nearly 20% were victims of physical abuse. Furthermore, in 2014, 6.5% reported that they suffered from sexual abuse. While another barrister I know, a former prosecutor, calls those figures into question, there is no smoke without fire. The fact that foreign helpers are routinely exploited working from dawn until late in the evening, and acting as not only housekeepers but nanny/English teachers too, and sometimes even used as office workers as well, means there is a working-environment mindset of getting maximum value out of them. Surely that kind of dehumanizing exploitation is only a short step away from outright mental and physical abuse.
The worry about the Lamma ferry case is that while the captains were prosecuted, no Marine Department official has yet been hauled before the courts for not exercising due diligence in allowing a regularly inspected vessel with very serious safety flaws to be at sea. How many more lives could have been saved if the vessel had had the required number of water-tight doors below deck, and if the passenger seats had been properly fastened? The lack of a bulwark led to the ship sinking very rapidly, and the seats, being poorly fixed, dropped to the bottom of a near vertical ship, fatally trapping many. Lastly, does the fact that the ferry is owned by Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, have any connection with the findings of government enquiries and the way the case was prosecuted?