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| HONG KONG — The noodle shop was doing a brisk Friday evening business, with diners crowded at shared tables. Eni Lestari, a migrant domestic worker in Hong Kong, spotted a seat near another woman and hurried to claim it. | 香港——这家面馆周五晚上的生意很好，可容纳多人的餐桌边坐满了食客。在香港打工的外籍女佣埃妮·莱斯塔丽(Eni Lestari)注意到另一名女子旁边有个空位子，就赶紧把它占了下来。 |
| Suddenly, the woman stood, and, according to Ms. Lestari, declared that she would not sit near her. | 莱斯塔丽说，那名女子突然站起身来，并声称不要挨着她坐。 |
| She did not give a reason. But hours earlier, the Hong Kong government had ordered virtually all of the city’s 370,000 migrant domestic workers — mostly Southeast Asian women in an otherwise largely racially homogeneous city — to take coronavirus tests and vaccines. Officials said they were “high risk” for infection, because of their habit of “mingling” with other migrant workers. | 该女子没有给出理由。但就在几小时前，香港政府下令让当地的37万外籍家庭佣工——大多是东南亚女性——做新冠病毒检测并接种疫苗。官员说，外佣是“高风险”感染人群，因为她们有“定期社交聚会”的习惯。 |
| “They don’t think about us as humans who also have a social life,” said Ms. Lestari, who came to Hong Kong from Indonesia 20 years ago. “The frustration and anger of the Hong Kong public during Covid-19 — now it’s directed at the domestic workers.” | “他们不把我们当成也有社交生活的人看，”莱斯塔丽说，她20年前从印度尼西亚来到香港。“香港公众在新冠病毒流行期间的沮丧和愤怒，现在都发泄在外佣身上。” |
| Ms. Lestari ordered takeout instead. | 莱斯塔丽没有在店里用餐，而是叫了外卖。 |
| Around the world, the pandemic has exposed the plight of migrant and other low-paid workers, whose labor undergirds local economies but is often unrecognized or exploited. Hong Kong has one of the world’s highest densities of migrant domestic workers, who make up about 10 percent of the working population. | 在世界各地，新冠病毒大流行已将外来打工者和其他低收入工人的困难处境暴露无遗，虽然这些人的劳动从底层支持着地方经济，但他们往往得不到承认或成为被剥削的对象。香港是世界上外籍家庭佣工最密集的地区之一，外佣约占工作人口的10%。 |
| Even before the outbreak, the workers — whose jobs encompass cooking, cleaning and caretaking — faced widespread discrimination. They are guaranteed only one day off each week and are legally required to live in their employer’s homes. Their minimum wage is $596 per month, with no legal limit on working hours. While most foreigners who live in the city for seven years qualify for permanent residency, the law excludes migrant workers. | 甚至在疫情之前，香港的外佣就已面临着广泛的歧视，她们的工作包括做饭、打扫卫生和照看人。她们只得到每周休息一天的保障，而且按法律要求必须住在雇主家里。外佣的最低工资是每月4630港币，但没有对她们工作时间的法律限制。虽然大多数在香港居住七年以上的外籍人有资格获得永久居留权，但外佣被排除在这项规定之外。 |
| In the pandemic, government officials and employers have invoked public health to impose more restrictions. | 在疫情期间，政府官员和雇主们以公共卫生为由，将更多的限制强加于外佣。 |
| Domestic workers — euphemistically called “helpers” — have described being barred from leaving their employers’ homes on their day off, in the name of preventing infection. Those who can leave say they are harassed by the police and passers-by. The government has repeatedly accused the workers of violating social distancing restrictions, though other groups, including expatriates and wealthy locals, have been at the heart of the city’s major outbreaks. | 据这些被委婉地称为“家务助理”的外佣描述，她们被禁止在休息日离开雇主家，名义上是为了防止感染。那些被允许离开的人说，她们外出时受到警察和路人的骚扰。政府多次指责外佣违反保持社交距离的规定，尽管香港的几次主要疫情都发生在包括其他外籍人士和富裕的当地人群体中。 |
| Officials singled out domestic workers with their first, and only, vaccination order. The requirement did not apply to the workers’ employers, with whom they are in daily contact. | 香港官员发布的首次、也是唯一一次强制接种疫苗的命令只针对外佣，不适用于每天都与外佣接触的雇主。 |
| The Hong Kong government eventually relented, after a public backlash. | 在公众强烈反对后，香港政府最终放软了态度。 |
| “We have to defend ourselves from the employers’ pressure, and also from the public and also from the government,” said Ms. Lestari, who founded the Association of Indonesian Migrant Workers. “It’s been very intense.” | “我们必须保护自己不受雇主的压力，也不受公众和政府的压力，”莱斯塔丽说，她是印尼移工工会(Association of Indonesian Migrant Workers)的创始人。“这些压力非常大。” |
| The testing and vaccination requirement was announced April 30, after two workers tested positive for variant strains of the virus. Officials said that all 370,000 domestic workers, except those who had already been vaccinated, would need to be tested. | 在两名外佣的新冠病毒变异株检测呈阳性后，政府在4月30日宣布了强制病毒检测和接种疫苗的要求。官员说，所有37万名外佣中，除了那些已经接种过疫苗的人，都必须做病毒检测。 |
| Workers would also need to be vaccinated before renewing their visas. While vaccine hesitancy is high across Hong Kong, Law Chi-kwong, the city’s labor secretary, said in a news conference that the workers were in a “different situation” than locals. If they did not want to get vaccinated, he added, “they can leave Hong Kong.” | 外佣还需要在续签签证前接种疫苗。尽管全香港对接种疫苗的态度都很犹豫，但香港劳工局局长罗致光在新闻发布会上说，外佣的情况与当地人的“不同”。他还说，如果她们不想接种疫苗，“可以选择不在香港工作。” |
| Workers denounced the announcement as racist. Officials from the Philippines and Indonesia — Hong Kong’s primary sources of migrant labor — objected. A few days later, Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, withdrew the vaccination requirement, though she maintained the only consideration had been public health. | 外籍工人谴责香港政府的这一要求是种族主义。菲律宾和印度尼西亚的官员也表示反对，香港的外佣主要来自这两个国家。几天后，香港行政长官林郑月娥取消了强制接种疫苗的要求，尽管她坚称，唯一的考虑是公共卫生。 |
| But the testing requirement remained — and last week, Mrs. Lam ordered a second round, even though the first had yielded just three positive cases. | 但仍有强制病毒检测的要求——上周，林郑月娥下令进行第二轮检测，尽管第一轮检测只查出了三例阳性。 |
| “What is the scientific basis?” said Dolores Balladares, a Filipina worker and spokeswoman for Asian Migrants Coordinating Body, an advocacy group. “Are they not fed up with thinking that migrant domestic workers are virus carriers?” | “这样做有什科学依据？”菲律宾籍外佣多洛丽丝·巴拉达蕾斯(Dolores Balladares)问道，她是倡导组织亚洲移居人士联盟(Asian Migrants Coordinating Body)的发言人。“难道他们还没有厌倦外佣是病毒携带者的想法吗？” |
| For many workers, the latest announcement was the most blatant example of their unfair treatment during the pandemic. | 在许多外佣眼里，最新的公告是她们在疫情期间受到不公平待遇的最赤裸裸的例子。 |
| Officials have stepped up patrols at popular gathering spaces for workers and deployed “mobile broadcasts” to remind them to stay apart. | 官员已经加强了对外佣聚集场所的巡逻，并出动“流动广播”，提醒她们保持社交距离。 |
| In December, a lawmaker proposed locking down workers on their day off. She did not propose any restrictions during the week, when they often buy groceries and run other errands. | 去年12月，一名立法会议员曾提议，禁止外佣在休息日外出。但她没有对外佣在工作日外出提任何限制，她们在一周中经常外出买东西、干其他杂活。 |
| Mr. Law, the labor secretary, rejected that proposal at the time, noting that the infection rate among domestic workers was half of the rate in the general public. | 劳工局局长罗致光当时就拒绝了这一提议，他指出，家庭佣工中的感染率只有普通公众的一半。 |
| Maricel Jaime, a Filipina worker who has been in Hong Kong for six years, said she had come to expect constant supervision on Sundays, when most domestic workers are off. During Christmas, she and her friends were careful to gather in small groups and to maintain distance. Still, whenever they briefly got close — to pass around food, or to retrieve something from a bag — officers hurried over to chastise them, she said. | 已在香港工作了六年的菲律宾籍外佣马丽塞尔·杰米(Maricel Jaime)说，她对周日的无休止监督已有所预料（周日是大多数外佣的休息日）。在圣诞节那天，她和朋友们很小心地进行了一次小群聚会，并保持了社交距离。尽管如此，她说，每当她们临时靠得近点，比如把食物递给他人或从他人的包里取个东西时，警察都会赶过来训斥她们。 |
| “The police are around us, always checking. Even if we are following the rules, the police are still hassling us,” Ms. Jaime said. | “警察一直围着我们转，总盯着我们。即使我们按照规定去做，警察仍骚扰我们，”杰米说。 |
| The police also monitor restaurant and bar districts popular among locals and expatriates. While those groups can also gather in private, domestic workers have no choice but to socialize in public spaces — in parks, under footbridges — because they have no space of their own. | 警方也对当地人和外籍人士喜欢的餐厅和酒吧区进行监控。虽然当地人和其他外籍人士可以举行私家聚会，但外佣们别无选择，只能在公园、人行桥下等公共场所交往，因为她们没有属于自己的空间。 |
| On a recent Sunday, on a single block in the central business district where many domestic workers were gathered along the sidewalk, a dozen officers in the beige uniforms of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department walked past within a few minutes. They reminded workers who were not eating or drinking to put their masks on, or simply stood nearby, watching. | 最近的一个周日，在中央商务区的一个街区可以看到许多聚在人行道上的外佣，十多名身穿米色制服的食物环境卫生署安全员几分钟就从旁边经过一次。他们或是提醒那些不吃东西或喝东西的外佣戴上口罩，或只是站在旁边看着。 |
| Some workers said they had no problem with the testing mandate. At a testing center on a recent Tuesday, one worker said it was a small trade-off for getting to work in Hong Kong, where pay was much higher than at home in Indonesia. | 一些外佣说，她们不觉得强制进行病毒检测的命令有问题。最近一个周二，一名外佣在检测点说，这是在香港工作的一个小代价，香港的工资比在印尼国内高得多。 |
| But those economic realities have made it difficult for workers who feel mistreated to defend themselves. Ms. Jaime said she had taken up domestic work because her job as a teacher in the Philippines could not support her parents. | 但这种经济现实让那些感到受了不公平待遇的外佣很难保护自己。杰米说，她之所以选择来香港从事家政工作，是因为她在菲律宾当老师的工资无法养活她的父母。 |
| “If I were alone, I’d rather go back, instead of working here in Hong Kong with that kind of discrimination,” she said. | “如果只有我自己的话，我宁愿回去，而不是在这种歧视下在香港工作，”她说。 |
| Legal recourse is limited. Hong Kong enacted an anti-discrimination law 12 years ago. But the Equal Opportunities Commission, the group that investigates complaints, has never taken a racial discrimination case to court on behalf of a complainant, said Puja Kapai, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies ethnic minorities’ rights. | 能求助的法律很有限。12年前，香港颁布了反歧视法。但负责调查投诉的平等机会委员会从未代表投诉者在法庭上起诉过种族歧视案，香港大学研究少数族裔权益的法学教授普嘉·卡帕伊(Puja Kapai)说道。 |
| The same day that a workers’ advocacy group filed a complaint about the testing and vaccination requirement with the commission this month, the commission’s chairman immediately denied that the rule was discriminatory. (He had, however, previously said that restricting access to restaurants by vaccination status could be discriminatory.) | 本月，一个外佣维权组织就强制检测和接种的要求向平等机会委员会提交投诉。同一天，该委员会的主席马上就否认了政府规定有歧视性。（但他以前曾说，按照是否接种疫苗来限制能否进餐馆有可能涉嫌歧视。） |
| Despite the attention that the pandemic has brought to the difficulties faced by migrant workers, Professor Kapai said she doubted that governments would embrace reform. Hong Kong’s economy has been battered by the outbreak, making pay raises for domestic workers unlikely, and few local residents have spoken out in the workers’ defense. | 尽管疫情引起了人们对外佣所处困境的关注，但卡帕伊说，她对政府是否会进行改革表示怀疑。香港经济已受到新冠病毒的重创，这让提高外佣的工资变得不太可能，而且香港居民中很少有人站出来为外佣说话。 |
| “I don’t think there is much of an incentive for the Hong Kong government to do anything differently,” she said. | “我认为香港政府没有多少采取任何不同措施的激励，”卡帕伊说。 |
| Still, some workers are trying to create change. | 尽管如此，一些外佣仍在努力引起变化。 |
| Ms. Jaime, who is also a leader in a union for domestic workers, said she spends her Sundays trying to inform other workers of their rights — while complying with social distancing rules. | 杰米也是一个外佣工会的领导人，她说，每个周日，在遵守保持社交距离规定的同时，她都在试图让其他外佣知道她们的权利。 |
| “I have fear to go outside because of Covid,” she said. “But I have so much fear that this kind of discrimination will get worse and worse.” | “因为新冠病毒，我害怕出门，”她说。“但我更担心这种歧视会越来越糟。” |
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