Just Saying | If not racism, what’s stopping Hong Kong from rescuing its citizens trapped in India’s coronavirus lockdown?
- Yonden Lhatoo says the official apathy displayed to those pleading for evacuation from India raises uncomfortable questions about ethnicity in deciding who is a ‘real’ Hongkonger deserving of help
Exactly how many desperate Hongkongers are trapped in India’s monumental lockdown, pleading for help to get back to the relative safe haven that our city has become in a world ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic?
How many of them are “real” Hongkongers who deserve to be rescued? Only the ones who hold Hong Kong passports, or were actually born here? Or do they have to be ethnic Han Chinese to qualify?
These all-important prerequisite questions may well have to be answered, perhaps a working group or two set up to discuss and assess what it all means, and a public consultation exercise launched to gain the consensus of the people, before anyone can do anything about the elephant in the room, given the astonishingly apathetic, non-committal response from the government so far.
“When necessary, the government ... may render assistance in liaising with relevant airlines to reserve seats for the journey to return to Hong Kong, and where the circumstances so warrant, the government would assess the need to exceptionally charter a special flight for the return of stranded Hong Kong residents,” was all we could get out of the bureaucratic horror that is the Security Bureau.
OK, so, does any of this apply to those stranded in India and will they get any of this sort of help? The answer, my friend, is as frustratingly impenetrable and annoyingly ambiguous as the chorus of that old song that does nothing to address the whole bunch of questions the verses ask.
