Penniless German citizen Ewald Widiner has to have one of the most bizarre applications for refugee status the city has seen.
Mired in a bureaucratic nightmare, the 62-year-old has been stranded in Hong Kong for more than a year and reduced to squatting in a building on Lamma Island because the German consulate refuses to give him a new passport.
Widiner says he wants to return to the mainland where he has taught English and German since 2004, but without a passport his employer cannot renew his work visa.
The trouble began in 2010, when 51Education, the Shanghai company for whom he worked, agreed to renew his work visa but there was no space left in his passport to put it. A German passport holder all his life, Widiner went to the German consulate in Shanghai to get a new one.
However, the red tape was such that his original mainland work visa ran out and he had to come to Hong Kong instead to apply for his new passport. But his application submitted to the consulate in Hong Kong was rejected and a new passport has still not been issued.
Widiner claims the consulate did this because he apparently had an outstanding unpaid tax bill in Germany. 'They told me there was a taxation problem, but I wrote to the relevant tax authorities in Germany, and they said there was no reason why the consulate should not give me a passport,' he said.
'I've tried every avenue since then and got no help. I may as well kill myself.'