Legal
How is legal information relevant to ethnic women and girls?
Legal information is about protecting one's rights legally. As ethnic minority women may be financially dependent on their husbands, when conflicts are brought to court men have much more bargaining power.
What are the legal resources available on Call Mira?
Call Mira has connections to centers which can help resolve legal problems. On this Call Mira website, there are also many videos that can explain alternative dispute resolutions apart from going to court, which is expensive, long, and arduous. The Equal Opportunities Commission may provide legal assistance to people who want to take legal action. Call Mira also has connections to the Community Legal Information Center, which covers various legal topics like maltreatment and violence. Information from the Community Legal Information Center is available in both Chinese and English. Call Mira can also help with court proceedings related to divorces. Call Mira can help you contact the Hong Kong Federation of Women's Centres as well as arrange for face-to-face consultations with lawyers. Call Mira can also help you to get in contact with the appropriate organizations that can help you resolve issues including divorce arrangements and clarify women's rights.
How does Call Mira help me?
When you call our hotline, Mira will first consider your problem and decide what kind of help you would need to resolve your issue. If necessary, Mira will contact our legal team, which will refer to you a pro-bono lawyer or a pro-bono counselor. Also, if necessary, Call Mira can also support you in all your meetings and interactions with the lawyer or counselor whichever one it may be. One of the most important things to remember is that Call Mira's number is a helpline, indicating that you must be the one to call the number. It will not be the other way around.
Permanent Residency / Visa in Hong Kong
It has come to light that while many persons of ethnic minority origin apply to be Permanent Residents of Hong Kong, many are rejected even though they have lived in Hong Kong for many years, sometimes even more than seven years which is normally the required naturalisation period. According to one SCMP article from 2014, applicants of Paskitani, Indian, and Indonesian origin have a success rate of about 65% when applying. The transparency of the process was deemed low. If this problem resonates with you and you find yourself in the difficult position where you are "stateless" in a way, please do give us a call. Because these kinds of issues are unique, we are currently unable to provide much help through our Call Mira website.
Call Mira is also able to help with passport and or visa problems that you may have. While Call Mira does not have anyone on staff with a lot of experience dealing with passport/visa issues, it can make use of its connections to organizations that can help. If your problem is related to this, please do still give us a call. Call Mira understands that this process can be very challenging to non-Chinese and or non-English speakers and that these problems stem from the inherent language barrier that many ethnic minority groups face.
The reason why Call Mira does not feature many "look for yourself" legal solutions is that once you call for help, we will help you find appropriate help. We understand that any legal problem can be daunting. For that reason, we urge you to give us a call and we will help to find appropriate help for you.
Call Mira is immensely grateful for its pro-bono legal and counseling team. Without this team, Call Mira would be able to provide dedicated help to women and girls in need.
Community Legal Information Centre
CLIC by HKU is a bilingual database that provides information about various legal issues in Hong Kong, how to deal with them, and what to expect in the process of working through them. Stop by CLIC to clarify your thought process.
CLIC is an extremely useful resource as it also provides information about family issues as well as youth issues.