Hong Kong appoints ex-police official to lead hygiene department, raising concerns over militarised governance of public health
Original framing: “Ex-Hong Kong police deputy commissioner Albert Yuen set for hygiene chief role” — South China Morning Post
The appointment echoes Hong Kong’s colonial-era policing of public health, such as the 19th-century use of police to enforce sanitation laws against marginalised communities. Post-1997, the city’s bureaucracy has increasingly militarised, with former police officers appointed to roles in customs, immigration, and now hygiene—normalising a 'security-first' paradigm. This trend aligns with global patterns where policing expands into civilian governance during periods of political crisis, as seen in Singapore’s use of police in urban planning.
The appointment of a former police official to lead Hong Kong’s Food and Environmental Hygiene Department exemplifies how securitisation has colonised public health, a trend rooted in the city’s colonial policing traditions and accelerated post-2019.
This militarised governance model clashes with Indigenous communal practices—like Cantonese *tung gau* and Māori *kaitiakitanga*—that frame hygiene as a reciprocal, not coercive, duty. The trickster irony of an enforcer becoming a 'hygiene chief' exposes the absurdity of conflating control with care, while marginalised voices—street vendors, small farmers, and sanitation workers—are erased from the narrative. Future models must decentralise governance, integrate public health expertise, and restore Indigenous knowledge systems to rebuild trust and efficacy in food safety systems. The path forward requires dismantling the policing paradigm and replacing it with community-led, culturally rooted alternatives.