TNAG-0397-FCO40-443-Problem-of-increase-in-crime-in-Hong-Kong-1973 — Page 141

MORNING POST

SOUTH CHINA

JUNE

18th

73

Making HK a better place to live

A great many hopes and promises will be put to the test in the Fight Violent Crime campaign starting today.

There has been a carefully orchestrated build- up which initially appears to have alerted a wide section of the public to the need to co-operate for their own and the common good. It has also spelled out some of the many problems facing the police and how they might be overcome.

As with the clean-up campaign, the stress has not only been on a short-term blitz, but on achieving long-term benefits in the shape of a better Hongkong in which to live.

But as that last major campaign has shown, it is no easy thing to instil a long-lasting sense of community responsibility in a public unused to thinking beyond the requirements of self and family.

This indifference and outright selfishness is a basic social flaw in Hongkong and because the origins of it are buried deep in a national tradition they are much harder to break.

Under the pressures of change Hongkong has grown more complex as it has sought to meet the proliferating social, political and economic demands of today.

Now, the unnaturally high density of population makes it essential for each member of the community to look beyond the boundaries ! of family to the community about him.

Until there is a definite sense that communal security, as with communal cleanliness, is the responsibility of every single person, then campaigns will do little to change the situation.

Every one has to realise that they have it in their own power to make Hongkong a safer and cleaner and happier place in which to live.

Leadership is necessary to show how this can be done, and there must be a sufficient force on the ground to help the public achieve these ends. These have been promised.

Co-operation is the key, and in Hongkong it is a quality that has too long lain idle; it is not surprising is it more than a little rusty.

It will take a vigorous two-way effort to get it back into working order, but there is no reason to doubt that it CAN be done.

The question is whether it WILL be done; all right-thinking people must hope and work to ensure that it is, for only in this spirit of mutual help neighbour with neighbour, people with authorities – will Hongkong eradicate the rampant lawlessness and the atmosphere of fear that toq often now prevails.

(bkk ly!!