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Category: Taking Action

This is Hong Kong

Author: Tsun Wan Yan It appears that Hong Kong has nothing to do with human trafficking, and our government did not sign the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking In Persons. In fact, Hong Kong is a port and destination of sold human commodities, and it has been placed on the Tier 2 watch list (same ranking as Afghanistan, Cuba, and Tunisia) for two consecutive years in the Trafficking in Persons Report by the U.S. Department of State. The ranking describes a country that is experiencing a significant increase in human trafficking victims, and that no tangible measures were established by the authorities. The Hong Kong government denies it has a human trafficking problem, but the Erwiana abuse case in

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Overcoming the Obstacles of Sin and Pain

Author: Jojo Poon When we said we should respond to the grand problem of human trafficking, we often think of serving the victimised. However, the experience of frontline workers reminds us that the traffickers, though evil, also possess God’s image and are as deprived of care and love as the victims. In March, Harmony Baptist Church, a long-time force in serving minorities and human trafficking victims in Hong Kong, hosted a seminar featuring Kevin Pettit, a counseling tutor, who shared about ways to walk alongside those who are struggling with sins and those who have been hurt deeply by others’ sins. Walking with “Sinners” To serve those who are struggling with sins, we need to first understand how

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Walking with the Refugees – An Interview with Christian Action

Banner image: (Left to right) The author, Executive Director of CA, Mrs. Cheung-Aug Siew Mei, CEDAR Staff, Jojo, and Director of CA’s Centre for Refugees, Justin Gaurav Murgai. Interviewer and Editor: Lincoln Chong Refugees are often viewed as a group of aliens in foreign lands who would only appear on the international news occasionally. The vast majority of Hong Kong people hold the same views, thinking refugees do not concern their well-developed city; yet we forget that our society was built by refugees escaping from civil wars. The waves of Vietnamese refugees in 70s to 80s were also an integral part of Hong Kong’s history. We visited the Christian Action (CA) to find out more about what Hong

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A Passion for Farming – An Interview with Hand the Farmer

Interviewer and Editor: Tsun Wan Yan In Hong Kong, we would often hear someone tell a person to “Go back to farming at your ranch” to tease one’s lack of wit. Now people don’t need to farm at a ranch, nor are they foolish to be a farmer. We found a perfect example of that in Wu Ying Luen, Hand—a young, humorous, and radiating farmer—from the Society for Indigenous Learning (SoIL) in Hong Kong, who differs greatly from our traditional image of a farmer. Hand did not grow up in a farming family, and he was just like any office young adults 4 years ago who would work in front of a computer every day from 9 to

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Living with the Poor – An Interview with Sir Mok

Interviewing & Editing: Tsun Wan Yan The acts of distributing necessities and visiting elder homes are still the dominant means of social involvement for some of the churches and Christian groups in Hong Kong. Mr. Mok Hing Luen (Sir Mok), a veteran in the field of Hong Kong’s social involvement and social work education, thinks that there are much more we could do to our society. “The church is complacent in giving the resources it has received from God to the people it sees that has a need,” said Sir Mok, who argues that such a downstream mindset of social involvement and poverty solving adopted by churches is self-limiting. But first we must cease boasting our roles among

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