葉錫
(MRS.) E. ELLIOTT.
TEL. 0-422414
OUR
REP!
YOUR
REF:
-2-
55. Kung Lok Road, Kwun Tonk.
KOWLOON.
the rich and influential, might be forgiven if they are driven to forceful tactics
in which they know they cannot win because the police are armed.
Whether they
did so on this day is hard to judge since on my own visit to the village a few days later I saw no large quantities of glass about, as one would expect after
a battle with bottles.
This is not the first occasion on which police have smoked the people out of their homes with teargas as if they were rats in a hole. People not involved in the
fracas but living nearby were driven out of their homes by the gas. As they ran out they were arrested and charged with "unlawful assembly". Among the persons
affected by the gas were several infants.
Police kicked down the door of one home not involved in the clearance, entered and arrested a sick man still in his underwear. He was beaten and ended
up in hospital, where he remains; his relatives have to get police permission
to visit him because he is now on bail and charged with unlawful assembly.
Among the arrested was a girl student, studying her books in a cockloft,
in preparation for the Government examination in history the next day. She
was charged and forced to attend court, missing her very important examination.
Footmarks on the door of the home thus entered can be
Been,
while the lower panel
is missing.
Altogether, 24 people were arrested and so charged; of these, only ten were
villagers of the seven families involved. New laws permit the police to charge anyone
they choose with "unlawful assembly". The checks and balances accompanying these
loitering laws sound all right on paper, but everyone knows that in court the
police can prove anything they want to prove, and in some courts the people
will not be believed against the word of a policeman.
On my visit to the village I found all the animals gone: some had died and
others had been sold. Four of the houses involved were flat to the ground, and the
remainder uninhabitable. No work had been started by the landlord, giving the lie
to his claim of urgency. Most of the people were talking quietly as if in fear of
being heard. A few of the braver ones spoke up at a press conference arranged
by concerned University students.
As I listened to these simple people telling their expériences, and as I
watched their fear and distress, I asked myself these questions:
1. is Hong Kong to be known abroad as a compassionate refuge for Vietnamese
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