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How kindness can get you trapped into crime

21 April 2024

 

Fr. John Wotherspoon speaks to migrant workers about the dangers of being too trusting

Be  careful. Be very careful.

This was the advice community leaders were asked to emphasize to their members last Sunday, in a workshop organized to show how the tentacles of drug syndicates have clawed into the ranks of unsuspecting foreign domestic workers.

In this time of internet shopping, many have been jailed for receiving parcels that turned out to contain drugs. Some were caught running errands to help out friends, for which they got arrested as drug traffickers.

And if they do get arrested, the charges are difficult to shake off.

PINDUTIN DITO

And now, an even bigger threat has emerged for domestic workers: getting involved in money laundering.

“Just being kind these days is dangerous,“ lamented Fr. John Wotherspoon, CEO of Voice for Prisoners and prison chaplain at Correctional Services Department.

He related the case of a former domestic helper and now an asylum seeker, who used to go to a park in Yuen Long.

TAWAG NA!

“A local Chinese guy became friends with her. One day, the guy phoned her, saying a friend had just arrived in Hong Kong. He asked her to go to a hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, to get something for him. Being a kind, trusting, simple Filipina, there's no question of payment and she went. She was just being kind and helpful,” Fr Wothespoon said.

“When she got to the hotel, there was an old American guy (who got arrested earlier for bringing in drugs). We got him out on bail as well. He was tricked to go to Sau Paulo in Brazil, and he thought he was bringing cheese to Hong Kong. They were both arrested,” he added.

Fr. Wotherspoon also showed a video of him interviewing a Filipina domestic helper who was arrested after accepting a parcel as a favor for a friend she met three months before.

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The friend had told her she was expecting a parcel of cosmetics from South Africa and could not receive it because she was leaving for the Philippines.

When the parcel arrived, the Filipina received it and signed the delivery receipt.

It turned out that the parcel had earlier been detected to contain 203.7 grams of shabu (also known as ice) and was brought to her by a Customs officer posing as a delivery man.

She was arrested and handcuffed, and other agents entered the house to search for drugs but found nothing.

For one month, while detained at Tai Lam Prison, she was not allowed to contact her family.

She was taken to a Magistrate’s court two months later, only for the case to be elevated to the High Court where, after a six-day trial, she was acquitted by a seven-member jury.

“Talking about being kind,” said Vivian Cheung, services program manager of Equal Justice Hong Kong, “we also have a lot of domestic helpers being arrested for money laundering and most of them started off being kind to lend their ATM cards to a friend in Central on a day off who tell them, ‘I need to open a bank account.’

“A lot of our clients are innocent and just wanted to be of help,” she said.

Raquel Amador, community education manager of the NGO Equal Justice Hong Kong, said in cases such as these, those under arrest should remain silent and insist on being allowed to call friends or relatives or even the Consulate for help.

Barrister Jonathan Kwok, who had worked pro bono on several cases involving domestic helpers, said it is difficult to get bail for cases that involve receiving parcels “because it cannot be disputed that the parcel is in your possession at some point.”

“You need to wait for the trial before you can explain your side to the jury,” he said.

“For domestic helpers, it's very difficult to get bail in the face of a serious charge…. It's sad for us lawyers to see,“ he added.

The workshop was held at the ESG Innovation Lab in Central and presented by Equal Justice HK, Voice for Prisoners and PathFinders.

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