2010-6-12
Since 1978, Hong Kong social welfare development aimed at carrying the community development based philosophy via community development work practice such as “Neighbourhood Level Community Development Project” (NLCDP). In June 2005, Home Affairs Bureau issued a “Community Development Policy Statement”, again stating the goals of community development included : a) strengthening the community power; b) cultivating the spirit of mutual help within the community; c) addressing the needs of the vulnerable groups; d) promoting community cohesion and harmony and e) promoting community participation. Yet after the return of sovereignty, under the hegemony of Hong Kong SAR government which prioritizes “stabilization overrides all other thing”, “neo-liberalism” and “managerial ideology” as the very top governing doctrines, the autonomy of social work and the core values of social justice are challenged by unprecedented blow.
In 2008, a “black” rainstorm badly hit Tai O and NLCDP there did to help victims displeased the Islands District Officer and the Tai O Rural Affairs Committee. Upon receiving their complaints, the Secretary for Home Affairs had on a certain occasion reminded the responsible organization of the need to maintain harmonious community relations in carrying out community work. Two social workers who provided services in the area were immediately transferred and received a written warning. Indeed, this is an obvious political interference by the government into the autonomy of social services. Such incident is not a single case, yet it is just because similar incident have not been exposed yet.
The above incident can be categorized as one of the “ River Crab Affairs” (河蟹事件) The pinyin of “ River Crab” is “Hexie” (和諧) meaning harmony in the sense. “River Crab” in the context of Chinese society indeed represents practices like riding roughshod, playing the bully. It satirizes the power holders proffering their ideas of so called “social harmony” by killing noises, and suppressing dissent. The “Tai O River Crab Incident” indeed exposes the fraud of the Secretary for Home Affairs Tsang Tak-sing. The government was alleged to have pressure on social work agency and interfere in the professional judgment in name of reaching social harmony. It not only seriously harms the core value of social work, but also deprives the social right of the grassroots. The social work agencies and the social workers are required to be behaved obedience in order to create so called “social harmony”. Social work profession is reduced to be part of the social control mechanism and be a technocrat who is manipulated by the government for reaching her sense of social harmony. Social work is therefore treated as “Unfaithful Angels”.
River crab is not only invading into the field of social welfare in Hong Kong, it is also penetrating into different domains of the society. 32 organizations from the field of social welfare and civil society formed themselves into “Anti-false Harmony Alliance” on 12th August 2009. We aims at safeguarding our core values—“Social Justice and Human Right” of social work. “We are not river-crab social workers, we don’t need river-crab social services!” Social workers should hang together and say no to any type of river-crab invasion into our social welfare field. We strongly demand for:
1. Reaffirm: The core values of social service and social work should be defending the right of the grassroots , sticking up to social justice and promoting pro-poor social reform.
2. Reorganize: It is crucial to maximize the power of social welfare stakeholders so as to exert enough influences to decision-making authorities in the social welfare agency. The most importantly, the social welfare agency should be more democratized, allow the development of staff union and respect the right of collective bargaining.
3. Recapture: It is important to enlist greater say in the long term planning of social welfare. In order to ensure enough autonomy of the social welfare agencies against any interfere from the funders, it is necessary to involve the service users to plan for a charter underlining the principles of social justice as using public treasury.
4. Reappear: Social workers should also play the roles of advocates, making critique and reform so as to promote social justice.
5. Reestablish: To facilitate a society respecting different opinions so as to foster real social inclusion.
Anti False Harmony Alliance (AFHA) is a network of frontline workers in the welfare sector, Tai O residents, service users, social workers students and scholars. We are concerned about social services and social work is being affected by managerialism and marketisation; social work, adhere to the core values of justice has been eroded at the same time, the public access to valuable social services, rights are also denied. We believe that a progressive, the value of upholding justice, social services and social work, is not only possible, but should work together to fighting for.