UN says government should enforce measures against racial discrimination

The United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) recently issued a report where it concludes its observations on China as a member state, and reviews the performance of the Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong on this topic.
The report from CERD compiles information and data submitted by groups based in Hong Kong.
One of the concerns and recommendations expressed in the report  relates directly to Macau and has to do with the fact that “Macau and China do not have a domestic law specifically defining and criminalizing racial discrimination fully in line with Article 1 of the Convention.” This fact saw the committee recommending that China (as a member state) and by extension the SARs “amend its domestic laws to expressly define and criminalize all forms of racial discrimination in full conformity with Article 1 of the Convention.” It further recommends that China “expressly prohibit both direct and indirect racial discrimination in all fields of public life, including law enforcement and other government powers.”

Another of the topics addressed in the UN report is a complete “absence of formal national human rights institutions,” in Macau. “Despite the functions fulfilled by the Commission against Corruption in Macau, China,” it recommended, that Macau “establish independent national human rights institutions in line with the principles relating to the status of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights (the Paris Principles) to ensure their effective functioning.” At the same time, it recommended that the governments (both central and local) provide these institutions with “sufficient structural independence and financial and human resources.”

Another area where Macau is failing is regarding the lack of data on administrative complaints. The report notes that “the courts in Macau, China did not receive any cases relating to racial discrimination during the reporting period.”

In this sense, the CERD recommends that the government “conduct training programs for government officials and civil servants, including law enforcement officials, about anti-racial discrimination laws and related administrative and civil complaint mechanisms, to ensure that victims are aware of their rights.”

According to the report, only two cases in Macau courts relate to “racist hate speech and hate crimes,” and in the last three years, “no criminal complaints were received and no criminal investigations were conducted in relation to racial discrimination.”

The Committee remarks that “an absence or a low number of complaints does not signify the absence of racist hate crimes or expressions of racial hatred.” Instead, it “may indicate barriers in invoking the rights in the Convention, including a lack of public awareness of the rights under the Convention; a lack of access to, availability of or confidence in methods for seeking judicial recourse; fear of reprisals; and limited access to the police including due to language barriers or a lack of attention to or sensitivity to cases of racial discrimination.”

Poverty reduction is another area of concern for the UN committee. In the region where a large number of foreign migrant workers reside, “the official poverty rate is greatly increased when factoring in the high cost of living.” The Committee urges the local government to “take further steps to eliminate ethnic economic disparities, urging at the same time that Macau present results in its next periodic report updating poverty rate statistics and other statistic indicators, disaggregated by ethnic and national origin, revealing the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, and the effectiveness of measures taken, including through the National Human Rights Action Plan 2016-2020.”

The Committee also expressed concerns over the low number of complaints filed by non-resident workers about employment agencies, noting, in “between January 2015 and June 2018, only 11 complaints from non-resident workers about employment agencies were found to be substantiated.”

The CERD recommends the government “further strengthen monitoring of the employment and living conditions of domestic migrant workers, and their access to education and affordable health care,” requesting once more that the government provide in their next periodic report “statistics on complaints, self-initiated and other investigations, prosecutions, sanctions and remedies to protect domestic migrant workers.”

The next report by the CERD will be released by 2023.  RM