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Elsie Tu takes a painful glimpse into a bitter past and calls on the Hong Kong government to take strict precautions to ensure untainted housing allocation

I was delighted to read the news about the construction of new housing. From my bedroom window I can see new buildings springing up, and that brings joy to my heart since I believe everyone born on Mother Earth has the right to a decent place to live. The earth is not the heritage of the rich, leaving multitudes of workers living in inhuman conditions.

When I first arrived in Hong Kong in 1951, after three years on the Chinese mainland, the housing situation was appalling. Many slept on the streets, while tens of thousands shared wooden huts liable to fire, typhoon or rainstorm damage. When the resettlement department built the first public housing estates in various areas, they were little better than concrete shelters offering the residents protection against the elements, but little comfort. Yet they were welcomed by ex-squatters who had lived in constant fear of their huts being destroyed by storm or fire, leaving them homeless.

As I then lived in the same circumstances, I can testify to the suffering of the people, many of whom had fled over the border to escape the civil war. I had come to serve people in these circumstances, and immediately learned how the hut-dwellers longed only for a safe shelter for themselves and their families.

That longing for a home still exists, although the obstacles to its fulfillment are quite different now. The government needs to adopt a more pragmatic approach to its realization for Hong Kong people of different social strata. It probably would have to start with a review of its land use policy. On this, I couldn't help observing with admiration how the late Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew prioritized giving his people a sense of belonging by instituting a policy that made it within reasonable reach for all Singaporeans to buy their own homes. He saw that without giving people a stake in where they lived, you could not expect them to act for the greater interest.

Presently, our government must take the strictest precautions to ensure corruption does not taint the allocation of housing according to the numbers on the waiting list. In those early days I was personally involved in many cases where families were not allocated the housing for which their number of family members qualified them. Why? I believe it was because the applicant hadn't offered a bribe. Dealing with these cases was difficult because whenever I reported a case of corruption, government officials asked me to name my informant. That I refused to do, fearing my informant would be punished. I found several people had been imprisoned because they complained against corruption. I have evidence in the form of letters sent to me when the prisoners were secretly released after I had complained publicly.

Among the refugees were some Chinese who brought with them their own wealth plus money they stole from their companies on the mainland. Many of those with such money, along with rich British and Hong Kong businessmen, established clothing factories where they employed their poorest kinsmen to work many hours a day in slave-like conditions. Some employers kept their workers locked in their factories to force them to keep working. Wages were generally just enough for the worker to eat, but not enough for his family. Wives provided the family's food by doing embroidery, while children stayed at home because, initially, there were no schools for them. Many times I went to the Education Department and pleaded for the children who had no hope for the future, but the British officers concerned would merely remind me that education was only provided for locally born children. When I told one such British officer about an 8-year-old boy whose parents had sent him to work, he replied, "That will do him good". Frequently I would stand by the window on the stairway of that office to wipe away my tears.

Those who now yearn for the days when Hong Kong was a British colony should be aware of such past cruelties, and realize that Britain took no steps to introduce a democratic system until it was certain that Hong Kong would ultimately be returned to China. Without prejudice I can say that central government has meticulously implemented the Basic Law, while many legislative councilors and other radical political activists are working hard to break it under the flimsiest of pretexts, most frequently under the guise of championing universal suffrage.

To clarify that I am not blindly "pro-China" as some so-called "democrats" have charged, I would like to see mainland wipe out all corruption and bring in more democracy. The fact is that I love the Chinese, and, people of all nations, races and ethnicities, because we are fundamentally all human beings and should be equal with respect to the so-called inalienable rights much touted but not always respected in many countries. Alas, the day when man recognizes that level of equality, appears ever more distant.

To be truthful, I thought when I reached the age of 80-plus, I would probably die, thereby escaping the present day horrors I had predicted in my mind - horrors of war both in the East and West. Now at age 102, I grieve over the killings taking place everywhere.

We used to sing, "When will they ever learn?" The reply at this stage appears to be "never". How sad.

(HK Edition 05/19/2015 page12)