香港獨立媒體 - Comments for "救救孩子! - 從羅卓瑤的紀錄片《Letters to Ali》說起"

Some statistics

Population density is high in HK. But i don't think it's an excuse for rejecting new immigrants. I believe Frostig would agree with me.

The issue of population density is quite tricky. For example, the population density of kowloon (about 113,000/square km) is much higher than many places. But it's still much lower than the downtown of Macau (the pennisular of Macau, about 400,000/square km). And that of Hong Kong island (17,500/square km) is lower than many places, such as Macau (including Taipa and Coloane) (25,000/square km). No need to mention New Territories.

Despite these statistics, I'm not arguing that Hong Kong is not crowded. I'm just saying that cities are always flexibile. In fact, there is a much greater wave of new immigrants flooding into Macau than Hong Kong since the early 1990s. Yet, Macau people have larger accomodation space than Hongkongers.

High density is not simply caused by new immigrants. As you mentioned, high-land-price policy is one of the reasons. Better economic policies and planning are the ways of coping with it. I don't have any clear idea. Let's have more discussion.

And for one thing why people question how Hong Kong can accommod

The POPULATION DENSITY!
For the vast majority of the people in Hong Kong, the living space is too little. It is simply too crowded and people are living in small units of blocks...... Like Lego, each family owns one 'unit' of Lego block. Frankly, it is inhuman. I have been quite satisfied to live in a 24 square metred unit with my family, as I know many, many people are in much worse situation then we are, IN HONG KONG. ONLY in Hong Kong. The land price has been far too high, and the the space we have are unbelivably small.

I don't mean to reject immigrants, but does it make sense just to ask this little question, which practically concerns our daily life, obviously? Nobody from elsewhere could ever imagine how we do everything in my home, ever. No friends of mine from elsewhere believed it immediately. For them, it is simply unthinkable. Of course, we have all the facilities, and even luxuries, but the spaces are too precious. While we shouldn't 'make' more lands from the sea (I am against reclamation myself) and the buildings have been so tall that they are going to block all the hills we have, then we also want to keep the 'countryside' and green zones we managed to keep, of course, where is the way out? Being a citizen of the most densely populated city in the world, I wouldn't blame the immigrants for this situation, as it is not their faults, but it shouldn't be anybody's fault, while we are all suffering from it. Tell me, please, how to cope with it?

越南難民問題 was not quite the same

I was very young then, but I still remember some major issues......
Of course a lot of them were harmless, but it happened that some of them intended to start fights, make weapons and to create problems within the camps. Internally, there were also problems between Northern Vietnamese and Southern Vietnamese. As I know, the Northern Vietnamese in general were the ones who attacked the Southern Vietnamese. It should be some historic, political issues, but I don't know very clearly as I was really very small then.
After I travelled to Vietnam some years later, I started to know more about the situation there, from the mouth of the tour guides. Some people did try to escape from their horrible lives there, but some were only dreaming of a 'paradise', like many illegal (and even legal) immigrants from Mainland China nowadays, to different western countries. I suspect no frequent visitor of In-Media is more familiar with the lives of illegal Chinese immigrants in Europe than I am, as I am actually living with them. Lack of information is always the biggest reason of the harsh life these people chose. Under wrong information, people's minds are always distorted.

復活節的行動

http://baxter05.info/

不要老是想香港如何容納這麼多人

人不是物，地方也不是一個玻璃瓶．

六十年代初，香港很窮，當時中國大陸更窮，許多人逃難來港，不少人還到新界接濟難民．

當年的越南難民問題，西方國家（特別是美國）有很大責任，但香港當時對越南人的歧視，我是親眼目睹的，我唸大學時，香港還有禁閉營（大概跟澳洲對待阿富汗差不多），當時，我也是一位新來港人士，他們的困頓徬徨，我也有同感．