FAR from the grimy car parks, housing estate stairwells and video arcades where Hong Kong children buy heroin, a holy war is being quietly waged.
It is a war of attrition, where growing colonies of child and adult drug addicts live in ministries of detoxification, cut off from their families, friends and the outside world for up to a year.
The battle grounds, some of them island enclaves and remote corners of the New Territories, with private beaches and access paths winding around lush mountain-sides, are usually breathtakingly beautiful.
But the re-education can be harsh. The ministries' rules are rigid and disobedience or misdemeanours like smoking cigarettes are grounds for expulsion. Electricity and food is rationed, personal possessions except clothes and toiletries banned and contact with outsiders severely restricted.
Yet despite great obstacles - little or no government funding, a lack of resources and ingrained traits of hardened street urchins, outlaws and prostitutes who make up the clientele - modern-day miracles are being performed.
The addicts, some of whom have sold their body and stolen from family and friends to buy heroin, are as young as 10 or as old as 55. Many are tough, tattooed and threatening, with long criminal records and an urge to maintain their synthetic highs.
But after a year, about one in five of those who enter the ministries have kicked their habit and turned to the Bible for bed-time reading.
