British peer enters Ho-tak row

A BRITISH peer has entered the row over the decision to deport six-year-old Hai Ho-tak, who was expelled from the territory in May.

Lord Avebury has written to Alastair Goodlad, the Foreign Office Minister with special responsibility for Hong Kong, calling on him to ask Governor Chris Patten to review the case.

Lord Avebury, who is chairman of the British Parliamentary Group on Human Rights, was prompted to intervene after reading about Ho-tak's plight. He then contacted legislator Elsie Tu for more details.

In his letter to Mr Goodlad, Lord Avebury wrote: ''I have an eight-year-old boy myself, and the thought of a six-year-old being permanently deprived of parental care causes me some distress. Surely in the interests of family unity . . . this little boy should be re-united with his mother and father?'' Mrs Tu said Lord Avebury, a Liberal Democrat, said Mr Patten had no right to criticise the human rights situation in other countries if it did not have a good record in Hong Kong.

In a letter to the peer, Mrs Tu pointed out that Ho-tak's grandmother on the mainland was 85 years old and lived among Chiu Chow clansmen six or seven hours from where the boy was staying. She added that neither his grandmother nor his 62-year-old uncle, who suffered from tuberculosis and had his own family to support, could support Ho-tak. She also said she found the family's case entirely understandable and credible.

Ho-tak's parents, Hai Keung-sing and Hai Wong Choi-nog, say he was born here after his mother entered the territory illegally. Mrs Hai later received official approval to live in Hong Kong but that same right was never granted to the boy.

''The Government would not believe he was born here. China does not admit he was born there either, so the boy is stateless and will not get a place on the waiting list as the Hong Kong Government tells him he should do in order to get permission to enter Hong Kong legally,'' Mrs Tu said.