Joseph Bosco warns that allowing the stories to spread would only fan panic |
| Source: South China Moring Post. To see the original post, please click here. |
| Rumours of mainlanders attempting to kidnap Hong Kong children are spreading here. It began with a small story in Sing Tao Daily on
March 2 which claimed that a couple and a teenage boy boarded the MTR
at Sham Shui Po, with the woman carrying a girl aged two or three.
The report said the girl was crying and trying to get away, and some
people became suspicious because the couple - who looked like they were
mainlanders - did not carry any child-care items. One passenger
questioned the couple, but they ignored her. At the next station, the
"mainland" couple and the boy tried to leave and, in the scuffle, they
dropped the child but got away. The paper said a woman appeared later,
saying the girl was her daughter. The report ended by saying that
although some netizens were sceptical about the truth of the story, most
said it was better to be safe than sorry.
That principle - better safe than sorry -
has helped the story get picked up by online news aggregators, and has
led many Hong Kong residents to post the story on bulletin boards and to
forward it by e-mail. Facebook groups critical of mainlanders are also
spreading the story. Earlier incidents are now being reinterpreted as
cases of mainlanders attempting to kidnap Hong Kong children.
The story is illogical, however. Kidnappings
of children happen worldwide, but they are exceedingly rare. What would
mainland criminals do with kidnapped Hong Kong children? It is not that
easy to get them over the border. A mainland criminal seeking to kidnap
a child would surely find it easier to do so on the mainland.
These stories were made more believable by a
recent report in which the Ministry of Public Security said that it had
rescued 77 children and arrested more than 300 suspects in swoops on
child-trafficking gangs. But many cases of "child selling" on the
mainland are actually informal adoptions, because there is no legal
avenue for it. When abductions have occurred, they have often been of
poor children whose parents have no means to press for their rescue.
Rumours can be dangerous. Incidents of
ethnic violence always begin with rumours that one group is about to
attack the other; it happened in Sri Lanka and Rwanda. Our children are
our most precious possessions, so an attack on them is one of the most
heinous crimes imaginable. It is understandable that many parents are
concerned, but we need to analyse why such rumours are spreading.
The government refuses to recognise
mainlanders as an "ethnic group", saying "we are all Chinese", but
ethnic differences do not have to be large to be significant.
Mainlanders who violate Hong Kong etiquette by pushing, not getting in
line, or eating on the MTR can be annoying, especially to the many local
people who are not doing well economically.
These stories are spreading because they
reflect many Hong Kong people's anxiety about the relationship with the
mainland. There is the problem of the growing number of mainland women
giving birth in Hong Kong. There is the fear of mainland drivers
undermining road safety if they are allowed to drive in the SAR. There
is uncertainty over the election for the new chief executive, and
whether Beijing will interfere.
In each of these cases, there are many
people in Hong Kong who fear, with some justification, that there are
hidden forces in the North that Hong Kong cannot control.
If we understand this background, we will not panic but just take normal
precautions to keep our children safe. We will realise that it is a
mistake to make scapegoats of mainland tourists.
If
this rumour continues to spread, it is just a matter of time before the
police are called in because bystanders have ripped away a child from
his or her parents simply because the child was having a temper tantrum.
And that traumatised family may not be from the mainland: they could be
any one of us. Hopefully, with more openness and democracy, such
rumours will disappear.
Joseph Bosco is an associate professor of anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
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