'Stateless' boy heads back to mainland China with 'nowhere to go'
‘No one wants him,’ says grandmother of undocumented 12-year-old as they cross border with nowhere to go after agreeing to leave HK
The fate of a 12-year-old who led an undocumented life for nine years in Hong Kong was in limbo last night after his grandmother had him voluntarily deported and took him back to the mainland.
But "family members" who were supposed to be waiting for Siu Yau-wai on the other side of the border did not show up when they arrived in Shenzhen. He and his grandmother appeared helpless and lost, chased by a media pack from Hong Kong.
After wandering about near the Shenzhen immigration checkpoint with her grandson, the grandmother, Chow Siu-shuen, 67, said they had nowhere to go and no one they could trust.
Asked if any of Yau-wai's relatives or parents were coming to pick him up, Chow said: "No one wants him. We don't have a plan as to what we should do."
The grandmother murmured repeatedly that she had no choice but to take him to an orphanage.
The sky is wide and the world is big. There is no place for [Siu Yau-wai]
"He is just an orphan. I don't know how we got into this situation. He doesn't have a family. If he does, we wouldn't have got to this stage," Chow said.
"I can't trust anyone now except myself," a frustrated Chow said, adding she regretted seeking help from Federation of Trade Unions lawmaker Chan Yuen-han, who first revealed their plight to the media and tried to champion their cause.
Just hours earlier, the two were at the Immigration Department offices in Kowloon Bay yesterday afternoon to surrender and arrange voluntary repatriation procedures.
It was not clear whether they were trying to escape the hostility of some Hongkongers demanding the boy be deported to avoid setting a precedent for other mainland illegal immigrants, or whether the boy would try to apply in future for re-entry to Hong Kong.
Lau Kar-wah, the lawyer helping them, had no explanation, but suggested Chow had made a "good decision" as both of them were under huge public pressure and subject to harassment.
In a government van, the boy was taken to the Lo Wu border checkpoint, where he was to be handed over to people understood to be his relatives in Shenzhen. But no one was waiting. The two later hopped into a taxi to escape the media pack. Their whereabouts were unknown, but Chow had said she would come back to Hong Kong on June 23.
The Immigration Department said it had been notified by the grandmother of the decision only yesterday and was told there were family members waiting for him in Shenzhen.
A source familiar with the matter said earlier that the department had been able to confirm the identity of the boy and his status as a mainland resident with the mainland's Public Security Bureau. The repatriation procedures were arranged because mainland authorities were willing to accept the boy, the source added.
Yau-wai was smuggled into the city by his grandmother at age three using another child's identity and a two-way permit, which allows for a short stay. Chow, a Hong Kong resident, had picked him up after his parents abandoned him on the mainland.
The grandmother held a press conference with the help of Chan to tell the boy's story late last month after learning of the suicide in April of a 15-year-old girl also living undocumented in Hong Kong.
Chow was later arrested for helping breach conditions of stay and granted bail, while Yau-wai was given temporary papers allowing him to stay for four weeks and subject to renewal.
"I respect [the grandmother's] decision," was all Chan had to say yesterday, after weeks of criticism that she had politicised the issue and exploited Chow and Yau-wai.
Views on whether Yau-wai should be granted a permit to stay have been divided with nativist groups calling for his deportation. After Yau-wai's papers were granted, crowds gathered at the Confucian Tai Shing Primary School in Wong Tai Sin - which had given the boy a test to determine his scholastic ability - and shouted "return to the mainland".
Localist group Civic Passion yesterday welcomed the decision and said Hongkongers should stay "vigilant" for a repeat of any such incident to avoid "opening the flood gates to similar cases".
Barrister and legislator Priscilla Leung Mei-fun agreed the entire issue had been a "tragedy" that had been "mishandled" from the start.
She said Yau-wai's legal status on the mainland was dubious as he did not have a registration. That would mean education and medical services would be extremely costly.
"It's very hard these days to apply to become a Chinese citizen even for a regular legal person," she said. "He is akin to a stateless person now."
Leung observed that the case should not have been publicised in such a high-profile manner as that had made it very difficult - both politically and legally - for the director of immigration to exercise discretion.
