Don't use the law to discriminate against domestic workers

In Hong Kong, people enthuse over the "rule of law" and its long-standing presence here. It is the cause of our economic miracle and social stability, and is purportedly the main difference between us and the mainland.

At a minimum, the rule of law includes the idea that those with power should not use the law to oppress those without. Unfortunately, history is replete with aristocratic elites or ethnic groups that oppressed those not belonging to their clan, caste or race, by dressing otherwise shudder-inducing inhumanity in the robes of legality.

Regrettably, societies have used the law as a tool of repression. For example, until recent times, laws in the US dictated dissimilar treatment of blacks and whites. Legal institutions in Germany did not thwart Hitler's rise to power but joined in enabling it. Judges committed moral crimes by abdicating their responsibility to check power.

Here in Hong Kong, until 1930, its then British rulers passed laws that reserved the choice areas of The Peak to non-Chinese, with exceptions made only by the governor's decree.

The city also had its own system of female child slavery. Local households bought young girls from poor mainland families and, like slave owners throughout history, assuaged their conscience with self-portraits of generosity - bondage in Hong Kong was surely better than freedom in poverty.

The average Hongkonger recognises that the laws here are bent in favour of the landed, moneyed elite, and people cry out that they deserve protection against the ravages of the powerful, politically connected elite.

Yet from those cries we hear the unmistakable echoes of hypocrisy. For while it is an outrage that tycoons have free rein to price-gouge and monopolise, it is apparently morally acceptable for those who suffer to inflict pain on individuals even more disadvantaged.