Build a detention camp in Shenzhen for Hong Kong’s asylum seekers: former security chief Regina Ip
Chief Executive CY Leung says idea would take too long, while human rights and legal experts dismiss it as unacceptable
Executive councillor and former security chief Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee called for a camp to be set up in Shenzhen for asylum seekers to halt the influx of economic immigrants to Hong Kong.
But concern groups slammed the idea as “unacceptable”, saying the authorities should not treat the individuals as criminals.
Ip, also a lawmaker of the New People’s Party, told the media she recently informally suggested to government officials building a detention centre on an outlying island of Shenzhen to house all asylum and torture claimants seeking to enter Hong Kong.
She claimed the officials “in general agreed” that a closed camp would serve as a “good deterrent”, but she did not identify the officials she consulted.
Hong Kong now faces a backlog of 11,160 applications on asylum and torture grounds that need to be screened. It was understood that a case took on average 2.3 years to resolve and that only 27 cases were confirmed to be genuine since the vetting system was unified in 2014.