The government has a blind spot to an obvious problem – racism. On November 30, the acting Secretary for Home Affairs, Kwan Wing-wah, said that Hong Kong did not need laws to prohibit race discrimination because the problem is not serious here.
Yes, thankfully there is no racial violence or overt racial tension. That does not mean there is no serious discrimination. It is disingenuous to argue that the degree of seriousness depends on whether there is violence. The Government would be severely criticised if it applied the same measure to discrimination against the disabled. There is no violence against the disabled, and yet no one argues anymore that there shouldn’t be laws to protect them from discrimination.
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A year after his young wife’s sudden death, Martin Jacques tells Margarette Driscoll he will never accept the way his life has been torn apart
The streets of Hong Kong were thronged on Millennium Eve, as its citizens ushered in the new century in style. There was no hope of getting a tram: the public transport system had ground to a halt because of the crowds. Instead, Martin Jacques and his Malaysian wife, Hari, walked well over a mile to meet some friends outside the Excelsior hotel in Causeway Bay. They arrived at midnight and saw in the new year standing outside the hotel entrance.
At about 1am, Hari, who had been unwell for just over a day, shouted: “Martin, Martin!” Jacques, a former editor of the British magazine Marxism Today, knew immediately what was happening. Hari sank to the floor, her eyes twitching wildly and her arms and legs jerking uncontrollably.
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Martin Jacques found his soul mate in Harinder Veriah; it was a passion that knew no cultural bounds. But in Hong Kong, he says she faced racism in everyday life and believes it was ultimately responsible for her untimely death in hospital
One afternoon in December 1993, a journalist called Martin Jacques and a lawyer called Harinder Veriah sat over lunch in Hong Kong and made a number of life-changing decisions. Jacques, who was 47, lived in London and had a partner of 18 years; Veriah, who was 26, was Malaysian, lived in Kuala Lumpur, and was also involved in a relationship. They had met on Tioman, off the east coast of Malaysia, the previous August. They had just spent a week together and knew that they couldn’t continue life without each other.
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More could have been done by hospital staff to help a woman who died after an epileptic fit, but it was unlikely this would have saved her life, a coroner said yesterday.
Recording a verdict of death by natural causes in the case of Harinder Veriah, Coroner Andrew Chan Hing-wai made no reference to allegations raised by her husband that Ruttonjee Hospital staff discriminated against his wife because of her race.
Veriah, 33, an ethnic-Indian solicitor from England, had a fit and collapsed on January 1 – a day after her birthday – while celebrating the millennium in Causeway Bay. She was sent to the hospital, where she suffered another fit on January 2 and died about four hours later.
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The inquest into the death of the 33-year-old Indian solicitor in Ruttonjee Hospital, following an epileptic attack, concluded that it came from natural causes. But the mother’s experiences during her 18-month stay in Hong Kong led her to believe that racism had placed her “at the bottom of the pile” when it came to medical attention.
Before that, she had shrugged off everyday irritations like being ignored by taxi drivers and sworn at in the street as something which, as a person of a darker skin, she had to learn to live with. Her experience was not unique. Nor is it confined to Hong Kong. But other jurisdictions have laws to protect ethnic groups from discrimination on racial grounds. The SAR has no such legislation. Nor does it have any intention of drafting it.
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Martin Jacques says the light in his life came on the day he met Harinder Veriah on a jungle trek in Asia and went out seven years later when she died within hours of celebrating her 33rd birthday and the New Year.
‘Hari was my life,’ said Mr Jacques. ‘She completely changed my life, and now that she is dead I don’t think things can ever return to what I would describe as normal.
‘I think of Hari every waking moment,’ said Mr Jacques. ‘My love and passion for her was as great on the day she died as when we first met – it never changed.’
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The hospital where Harinder Veriah died issued a statement last night denying claims made at her inquest that she was the victim of discrimination.
Ruttonjee Hospital said: ‘The hospital reiterates that all patients are treated equally by health care professionals with appropriate medical care, regardless of their races and background.’
It pointed out that although the coroner made no reference to the racism allegations in his verdict, he had described it as unsubstantiated earlier in the inquest.
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When Martin Jacques, a British journalist based in Hong Kong, approached a doctor at a Hong Kong public hospital to inquire about his wife, who had been admitted after an epileptic fit on January 1, the doctor was brusque. When he told his wife, Harinder Veriah, a Malaysian of Indian origin working for a London law firm, about the incident, she replied: “I am at the bottom of the pile here.”
The following day, Ms Veriah, 33 and until then in good health, died after suffering a respiratory arrest followed by a cardiac arrest. The boundaries that demarcate where rudeness ends and racism begins are difficult to draw, but Mr Jacques’ impassioned denunciation of the prejudice he believes his wife faced at the government hospital has cast into focus what critics charge is a pervasive strain of discrimination in Hong Kong.
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The Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong reported last week’s inquest on Harinder Veriah, wife of former editor of Marxism Today Martin Jacques, in bold characters.
‘Indian lawyer suspects colour discrimination, then loses life in local hospital.’ They headlined the tears shed in court by Jacques, described as a ‘famous English voice’, as he made the charge.
‘I am at the bottom of the pile,’ she had said to him in the Ruttonjee Hospital where she was under observation after suffering an epileptic fit. ‘I am the only Indian here, everyone else is Chinese.’
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An Indian solicitor allegedly discriminated against by doctors at a public hospital told her husband she felt ‘at the bottom of the pile’ hours before her death, an inquest heard yesterday.
Harinder Veriah, 33, a solicitor from England who came to practise in Hong Kong in 1998 for three years, suffered an epileptic fit on New Year’s Day while drinking champagne and celebrating the millennium in Causeway Bay.
She was admitted to Ruttonjee Hospital, where she died the next day.
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