Student from Bangladeshi family aims to become HK lawmaker
Fariha Salma Deiya Bakar was born to a Bangladeshi family in Hong Kong and now aims to become the city’s first ethnic minority lawmaker, the South China Morning Post reports.
“I want to see more ethnic minority representatives in the government, and make Hong Kong a better place for ethnic minorities to live in,” Bakar told the newspaper.
The 20-year-old university student is already one of the few South Asians in the city’s lawmaking body, serving as an assistant to the Legislative Council.
Bakar’s parents moved to Hong Kong 25 years ago as regional managers to manage the local branch of a garment and accessory company.
Bakar learned to speak Cantonese, a Chinese dialect spoken in Hong Kong and southeastern China, from the age of two.
She is also fluent in Mandarin, Bangla, Hindi, English and the Filipino language of Tagalog.
Bakar says she believed it was essential to learn Cantonese for life in Hong Kong.
“Cantonese is important. If I do not master it, I may have a lot of difficulties finding jobs, whether I have a degree.
“Cantonese is part of Hong Kong culture and important for a sense of belonging here,” she told the South China Morning Post.
While many of her ethnic minority classmates studied Cantonese as a second language, Bakar chose it as a compulsory course and also attempted to immerse herself by watching dramas on television and reading local newspapers.
She says it has helped her assimilate and now about 90 percent of her friends are locals.
“If I wasn’t eager to learn Cantonese, I wouldn’t have what I have today.”
But she remains concerned about others in the ethnic minority community.
“I realised how lucky I am that I grew up in Hong Kong so happily, but for some others around me, it is not the same. They face difficulties in a lot of things – from getting a spot in kindergarten, to opening a bank account and renting a flat,” she says.
A Pakistani friend of hers once met a landlord who refused to rent to ‘people of other races’, she said.
A 2016 government census by the South China Morning Post says that ethnic minority residents amount to 8 percent of Hong Kong’s population.
Bakar says she feels a responsibility to increase the awareness of fair and equal opportunities for such minorities.
She joined the City University of Hong Kong’s Project Ethnic Minority Empowerment, which provides mentorship and guidance ethnic minority students in secondary school, in 2016.
In 2017 she became an intern for the Democratic Party. In 2018 she nominated herself to a Diversity List of ethnic minority members able and willing to serve on government committees and became the group’s youth representative.
Her current boss, Dennis Kwok Wing-hang, offered her a position after hearing her speak at a forum.
“My colleagues were astonished because I’m an ethnic minority member and only 20 years old,” she told the South China Morning Post.
In the post she conducts policy research, drafts and translates speeches and press releases and monitors the development of important issues, in particular those involving ethnic minorities.
Between work and studies, her schedule is tight.
“It comes from passion,” she says. “I think there is no such thing as not having enough time. For example, if you have time to lie down on your bed and scroll on your phone, you have time for much more meaningful things.”
