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In response to this pattern, police continued monitoring Internet chat rooms and Websites used by both individuals and syndicates to advertise companies, with officers assigned to assemble evidence against the operations and decide the techniques utilized by syndicates to recruit the ladies. On July 27, a man was sentenced to life imprisonment for the April homicide and dismemberment of a 16-12 months-old girl he met by a compensated courting Web site. Social service suppliers and the media remained concerned at the rise in "compensated dating" among minor girls. By September the media reported that police made 22 arrests and referred 13 women to the Social Welfare Department. Activists reported that residents of South Asian descent confronted discriminatory therapy from police on patrol, including repeated checks of id documents and the use of disparaging terms for South Asians. Activists and the federal government disputed whether new immigrants from the Mainland should be thought-about as a inhabitants of concern below antidiscrimination legislation. While the federal government argued they shouldn't, activists contended language barriers (many new immigrants, though in a position to learn Chinese, did not communicate the prevailing Cantonese dialect) and different components put these new immigrants at a disadvantage. Some Hong Kong businesses reportedly confiscated passports, employment contracts, and ATM playing cards of domestic workers upon arrival and withheld them till the debt had been utterly repaid, factors that additionally may facilitate labor trafficking. |
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