Bullying and slandering in HK: the silent epidemic

 The following article deals with sociopathic behaviour in general and their use and abuse of lies. At the bottom of the webpage you can find further articles about sociopaths and advice on how to deal with them. It's quite general but a useful reading nonetheless if you have never faced somebody with this kind of mental disorder: https://discover.hubpages.com/health/Sociopathic-Tendencies-Pathological-Lying

 List of behaviours that could help identify a sociopath / psychopath, as presented in Cleckey, Mark of Sanity  (1941): 1. Superficial charm and good intelligence 2. Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking 3. Absence of "nervousness" or psychoneurotic manifestations 4. Unreliability 5. Untruthfulness and insincerity 6. Lack of remorse or shame 7. Inadequately motivated antisocial behaviour 8. Poor judgement and failure to learn from experience 9. Pathological egocentricity and incapacity for love 10. General poverty in major affective relations 11. Specific loss of insight 12. Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations 13. Fantastic and uninviting behaviour, with drink and sometimes without 14. Suicide rarely carried out 15. Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated 16. Failure to follow any life plan. Cited through Lies and Liars (Dr. Gini Graham Scott), pp. 28-29 Also from the same book: "(...) while some sociopaths might be drawn...

 1) The sociopath next door : the ruthless versus the rest of us / Stout, Martha: Unavoidable reading. Take it as a starting point to help you understand, identify and defend yourself of psychopaths and bullies in the office and beyond.  2)People of the lie : the hope for healing human evil / M. Scott Peck: some parts of the book are more than questionable and avoidable (especially the ones in which the author presents himself as some kind of spiritual/religious guru), but some others are still an excellent account of how psychopaths think and act amongst normal people. Go to those parts of the book and bear in mind the descriptions of office sociopaths because they are some of the most vivid and accurate ones that I have come across. Both books are available at the Hong Kong Public Library system, by the way.

https://www.clic.org.hk/en/topics/defamation/what_constitutes_defamation Very sketchy and basic, but it is a starting point to understand the legal concept of "defamation" in Hong Kong.

 https://varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk/index.php/2018/03/workplace-bullying/ "(...)the formation of office cliques may contribute to bullying behaviour. Siu says workers who are not on their superiors’ good side often find themselves being treated unfairly."

 I decided to start this blog because through the passing of the years I have felt appalled and astonished by the level of acceptance and the wide extension of bullying practices in the working atmosphere of Hong Kong. I suffered a mild, but nevertheless of grave consequences in my professional career years after, case of bullying and moving from three Spanish ladies at the School of Modern Languages of HKU in 2006/07, and a few years later I came to experience how the internal mechanisms of some institutions in this city protect and give impunity to bullies, manipulators and slanderers:  I was a lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages of CUHK when the following happened. I supported the accusations of bullying against the supervisor of my Department from a workmate that even needed psychological support to cope with the bullying. As a result of my reporting, the Head of my department (Linguistics and Modern Languages- 2013) vilified me and accused me of...

https://conventuslaw.com/report/a-hong-kong-lawyers-guide-defend-yourself-against/ Quite discouraging from a legal point of view, indeed.

https://www.happyer.io/company-article/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-workplace-bullying-in-hong-kong "It’s alarming and unsettling to know that bullying in workplaces  is a common practice in Hong Kong, apparently experienced by just over half of all workers randomly polled (...) . Even more perturbing is that most of these respondents admitted suffering in silence at the hands of their superiors who were meting out the abuse."

https://www.cityu.edu.hk/class/media_events/magazine/issue9/en/tackling-hongkongs-bullying-and-suicide-crises.html About bullying, mainly related to children and school environment. It's a pity that they don't comment much about bullying at the workplace, which is surely a widespread and appalling issue in this city.

I am going to try to explain in the most exhaustive way that I can how a culture of bullying and slandering was nurtured and developed at the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages and how the management of CUHK, in spite of having enough evidences of it, tried repeatedly and stubbornly to hide it and deny any knowledge about the shameful behaviour instituted there as normal practice for a long time (I could say that until the complaint of a Danish/German teacher and my own complaint made it impossible to keep denying the wrongdoing). I don’t know the exact number of language lecturers affected, and not all cases should be equalled without paying attention to individual details, but since what I went through seemed to be a well instituted practice I guess that quite a good number of people passing through that place in those years were affected. Even to this day, no formal apology or reparation has been offered by the university, and silence and a shrug of shoulders are their m...