Hundreds complain over 'Putonghua-speaker' bans

EOC chief Ricky Chu (seen left) says treating people differently because of the language they speak cannot be seen as racial discrimination. Photo: RTHK

Altis Wong reports

The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) has recently received almost 600 complaints and enquiries regarding Hong Kong restaurants refusing to serve mainlanders or allegedly discriminating against them in other ways, the watchdog's head Ricky Chu said on Thursday.



Chu said some complaints had also come in about hotels refusing to accept guests from the mainland, or in some cases medical workers.



Despite saying he hopes the situation will "calm down", Chu told RTHK that he expects to receive more such complaints, even though in many cases no laws are likely to have been broken.



Speaking on the Chinese-language Millennium programme, he noted that treating people differently because of the language they speak cannot be classed as racial discrimination.



But if a business refused to serve "mainlanders" rather than "Putonghua-speakers" it could be breaching the law, Chu said.



He said it would be discrimination, for example, for a restaurant to say it would welcome Putonghua-speaking Malaysians, but not mainlanders speaking the same language.



The EOC chief also said that if restaurants are turning people away due to measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, this would not be a problem.



The Society for Community Organisation recently said it had found dozens of restaurants in the city which were explicitly stating that mainlanders or Putonghua-speakers other than Taiwanese people would not be served.