Hundreds of people whose offspring were denied right of abode gathered in Admiralty yesterday to demand legal aid to mount a lawsuit against the government. They accuse it of misleading Hong Kong people about the number of mainlanders eligible to live in the city and are seeking unspecified damages.
In 1999, the government warned that 1.67 million mainlanders would be eligible to enter Hong Kong - 700,000 of them immediately - under the Court of Final Appeal's interpretation of the Basic Law provisions on who had right of abode. The figure was issued to support the government's referral of the court's ruling to the National People's Congress. Last month it was revealed only about 130,000 abode claimants had arrived since 1998.
A spokesman for the abode protesters, Tsang Kwong-yu, said: 'If the government had not presented the [1.67 million] figure ... [our children] would have had the right of abode already.'
Legal Aid Department staff told the protesters to put forward a representative case for consideration.