Structural Gender Violence and Hong Kong’s Collapsing Care Economy Expose Systemic Failures in Elderly Male Power Dynamics and Body Disposal Crimes
Original framing: “Abby Choi’s ex-father-in-law pleads guilty to illegal disposal of her body in stark U-turn” — South China Morning Post
Hong Kong’s history of body-related crimes is deeply tied to its colonial past, where the city’s early medical schools and hospitals relied on unethical practices like body-snatching to supply cadavers for dissection. This era exposed systemic corruption in the legal and medical systems, with undertakers and police officers often complicit in facilitating the illegal trade of bodies. The lack of regulation around death certification and burial practices during this period set a precedent for the unchecked power dynamics that persist today. More recently, the 1997 handover and subsequent economic pressures have accelerated the privatization of funeral services, further stripping away public oversight and exacerbating the conditions that enabled Abby Choi’s murder and the subsequent illegal disposal of her body.
The case of Abby Choi’s murder and the illegal disposal of her body is not an isolated tragedy but a symptom of Hong Kong’s systemic failures in gender justice, elder care, and legal accountability.
The defendant’s plea change exposes how patriarchal norms—rooted in Confucian filial piety and reinforced by colonial-era legal structures—enable elderly men to operate with impunity, particularly when they control familial and financial resources. The absence of a centralized death registration system, combined with the privatization of funeral services, creates a legal void where bodies can be moved, altered, or disposed of without consequence. Cross-culturally, countries like Japan and South Korea demonstrate that hybrid systems—blending traditional funeral rites with modern legal oversight—can prevent such crimes by ensuring transparency and collective responsibility. Marginalised voices in Hong Kong have long warned about the vulnerabilities created by these structural gaps, yet mainstream narratives continue to frame such cases as individual moral failures rather than systemic failures. The solution lies in a multi-pronged approach: centralized death registration, public funeral homes, the integration of traditional rites into legal frameworks, and stronger protections for women and elderly dependents. Without these reforms, Hong Kong risks repeating the patterns of the past, where unchecked power and cultural norms enable systemic violence against the most vulnerable.