Truth and Light casts an unwelcome shadow
Hong Kong Standard 2005-10-06
Phil CW Chan
Truth and Light casts an unwelcome shadow The Hong Kong government’s decision to commission the Society for Truth and Light, an anti-gay lobby, to provide human rights and nondiscrimination education to school teachers violates Hong Kong’s international treaty obligations and the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance. Ultimately, human rights education for school teachers filters down to students. Article 29 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child mandates that education must be directed to the development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential, and to the development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. In 2002, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concern that sexual minority adolescents in Britain did not have access to appropriate information, support and protection to enable freedom of sexual orientation. Such observations clearly apply to Hong Kong. Given Truth and Light’s public stance on sexual orientation, it is fair to conclude that it will use the commissioned opportunity to proselytize school teachers into thinking that sexual orientation discrimination and harassment is justified. Truth and Light may also send the message to teachers that homosexuality is a disease curable by reparative therapy. Truth and Light’s position is contrary to medical conclusions reached by the British Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and, indeed, the Chinese Psychiatric Association. Such an overt denial of the difficulties facing sexual minority youths only increases internalized homophobia and heightens the risk of suicide among teenagers. In giving Truth and Light a definitive say in education, the government puts its teenage citizens in jeopardy. Furthermore, the society’s incapacity to provide school teachers with objective sex education in regards to human rights and nondiscrimination will lead to homophobic bullying among youth, and perhaps browbeating by school teachers themselves. The government must bear in mind that it is liable in its own right and vicariously in civil actions for negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress as a result of such bullying. Perhaps Truth and Light will disclaim such liability before it carries out its educational services. On a more fundamental level, the administration’s decision to commission Truth and Light to provide human rights education demonstrates that the government lacks the most basic understanding of the notion of human rights. Its repeat claim of commitment to the protection of equality rights cannot be sincere. Such insincerity is evident by the fact that the government considers discrimination against mainland Chinese immigrants cannot be unlawful under an eventual Race Discrimination Ordinance, as we saw in its race antidiscrimination consultation exercise last year. It is significant that the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1994 ruled that sexual orientation discrimination is unlawful under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In 1999, the Committee called on the SAR government to guarantee sexual orientation equality. The call was echoed by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2001. In its general comment on Adolescent Health and Development in 2003, the Committee on the Rights of the Child reached the same view – that sexual orientation discrimination contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Above all, the government’s complicity perpetuating discrimination in Hong Kong violates Article 22 of the Bill of Rights Ordinance, for which the government itself is liable by judicial review or civil action under section 7 of the Ordinance. Phil CW Chan is editorial board member of The International Journal of Human Rights and the Journal of Homosexuality
