Hong Kong students from ethnic minorities star in documentary to help break negative stereotypes

Hong Kong-born Filipino Jianne Soriano made the video Own Voices: Breaking Stereotypes to help bridge the culture gap between young people from ethnic minorities and their Chinese counterparts

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Hong Kong-born Filipino Jianne Soriano made the documentary Own Voices: Breaking Stereotypes.

Published: 6:15pm, 21 Mar 2018Updated: 11:37am, 26 Mar 2018

Hong Kong-born Filipino Jianne Soriano feels she didn’t have a voice while growing up as a member of an ethnic minority in Hong Kong. That prompted her to make Own Voices: Breaking Stereotypes, a multimedia project comprising documentary-style videos and photographs that tell first hand the stories of ethnic minority members of the community.

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“Growing up in Hong Kong I didn’t really see a lot of people who looked like me on TV or in the wider media. That is why I became a journalist – to give a voice to the voiceless, to tell the stories of people like me,” Soriano says.

Soriano hopes the stories, which examine the stereotypes about ethnic minority youth in Hong Kong, will help form a bridge of understanding between non-Chinese youth and their Chinese counterparts, and start conversations about how to make positive changes.

Hong Kong-born Pakistani Mahum Shaikh took part in the project because she felt Hong Kong’s education system segregates ethnic minority students.

According to the government’s Thematic Report: Ethnic Minorities, which uses data from the 2016 population by-census, the number of Hong Kong residents from ethnic minorities, including foreign domestic helpers, increased 70.8 per cent from about 342,000 in 2006 to more than 584,000 in 2016.

The report found 19.4 per cent of people from ethnic minorities were living in poverty, up from 15.8 per cent in 2011. It also found that lack of proficiency in languages, especially Chinese, was one of the obstacles to community integration and employment.

The number of Hong Kong residents from ethnic minorities, including foreign domestic helpers, increased by more than 70 per cent between 2006 and 2016. Photo: Dickson Lee

“It’s time we spoke out against this injustice because [people from] ethnic minorities are suffering because they are not provided with the same education level or the same privileges that local Chinese students receive,” says 18-year-old Shaikh. “This has left us with minimum or no opportunity to enter tertiary education or to get a job [locally].