Yvonne Webb

The Chi­na So­ci­ety is fight­ing back to re­gain its po­si­tion of trust among food con­sumers fol­low­ing ad­verse re­ac­tions to a video of a dog al­leged­ly be­ing pre­pared for con­sump­tion for a Chi­nese restau­rant and a fall out at its many eat­ing places.

The so­ci­ety said the video as well as the com­ments of Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, "who clear­ly im­plied that all Chi­nese eat dog meat and that all restau­rants owned by Chi­nese serve dog meat to an un­wary pub­lic and ad­vised Tri­ni peo­ple to go veg­e­tar­i­an," has bad­ly wound­ed the en­tire Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty.

It said Chi­nese na­tion­als and Trin­bag­o­ni­ans of Chi­nese de­scent have all be­come the sub­ject of deroga­to­ry com­ments, racial slurs, ha­rass­ment, in­tim­i­da­tion, racial iso­la­tion, in­tol­er­ance and bias as a re­sult.

"The fact is that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of Chi­nese na­tion­als and Trin­bag­o­ni­ans of Chi­nese de­scent are to­tal­ly re­vulsed by the idea of con­sum­ing dog meat," the state­ment, en­dorsed by The Chi­na So­ci­ety Zhong Shan As­so­ci­a­tion, Toi Shan As­so­ci­a­tion, Sun Wai As­so­ci­a­tion Fu Tong On As­so­ci­a­tion, Chi­nese As­so­ci­a­tion in St Ann's, The Chi­na Mer­chant As­so­ci­a­tion and The Chi­nese Art and Cul­ture Stud­ies So­ci­ety, cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly stat­ed.

"We have not done any­thing to harm the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go," it added.

Khan has ad­mit­ted his state­ment may have been ir­re­spon­si­ble and said he had in­struct­ed his com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­part­ment to is­sue an apol­o­gy.

How­ev­er, the Chi­nese So­ci­ety said: "On the streets, in busi­ness places, in per­son, on the phone and on the so­cial me­dia, we are con­stant­ly be­ing sin­gled out and ha­rassed.

"As adults we find these gross­ly un­fair in­sults hard to bear but we are even more ter­ri­fied of the po­ten­tial for it to de­gen­er­ate fur­ther in­to worse at­tacks on our weak­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, par­tic­u­lar­ly on our chil­dren, who will be sub­ject to di­rect bul­ly­ing and ridicule when they start school in Sep­tem­ber."

The so­ci­ety re­mind­ed that the Chi­nese peo­ple have in­te­grat­ed and co-ex­ist­ed in har­mo­ny in this coun­try for over 209 years and have a proven track record as pro­gres­sive, qui­et and peace-lov­ing peo­ple,

"Our busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing restau­rants, em­ploy thou­sands of lo­cal labour and sup­port many lo­cal sup­pli­ers. So­cial­ly, cul­tur­al­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly, we are an in­te­gral part of the Trinida­di­an fab­ric. We have al­ways tried to give back and sup­port the coun­try that we love. It is our home too."

Speak­ing about its ef­fort to en­gen­der greater co-op­er­a­tion be­tween the peo­ple of Chi­na and T&T, the so­ci­ety re­ferred to the three teams of spe­cial­ist Chi­nese sur­geons, in­clud­ing neu­rol­o­gists and car­di­ol­o­gists, who are pro­vid­ing the coun­try with skills not read­i­ly avail­able lo­cal­ly.

The Chi­nese As­so­ci­a­tions have as­sist­ed many lo­cal in­sti­tu­tions and it al­so es­tab­lished The Con­fu­cius In­sti­tute to teach the Chi­nese lan­guage and cul­ture to fos­ter greater un­der­stand­ing and peace. It al­so teach­es Man­darin at schools for free.

The so­ci­ety said: " It is most un­for­tu­nate that af­ter so many years of si­lence we of Chi­nese ex­tract find our­selves hav­ing to raise our voic­es and call on the min­is­ter to re­tract his un­found­ed state­ments for the harm it has caused."