DATE=03/18/02

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=HONG KONG/ABODE SEEKERS (L-ONLY)

NUMBER=2-287682

BYLINE=HEDA BAYRON

DATELINE=HONG KONG

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Dozens of mainland Chinese abode seekers in Hong Kong went on a hunger strike to fight a court ruling ordering them to leave the territory. But as Heda Bayron reports from our Asia News Center, the group faces deportation at the end of the month.

TEXT: Hong Kong's immigration department remains firm it will not grant an extension of stay for more than 100 mainland Chinese now living in Hong Kong. The abode seekers say they will refuse food until the government overturns a decision to send them back to China.

The immigrants had been ordered to leave the territory after Hong Kong's Final Appeals Court ruled early this year that they do not qualify to stay in Hong Kong. Most of the abode seekers are children of mainland immigrants who are legal residents of Hong Kong.

Franco Mella is a Catholic priest who has been helping the abode seekers.

/// MELLA ACT ///

We thought the best and most effective way to counter the evil that is present in the system is to go on hunger strike. So we started the hunger strike and we will go on until the 31st of the month.

/// END ACT ///

/// YU ACT, IN CHINESE, FADE UNDER ///

Yu Yuek Pang is one of the demonstrators. He says he has applied for residency in 1998 and has been waiting to join his parents here permanently since then. He says the government has been unfair to him and his fellow protesters.

The hunger strike is the latest in a series of protests over the past few weeks by the abode seekers. Their case poses a major dilemma for Hong Kong. Beijing overturned a Hong Kong court ruling in 1999 allowing mainland children with one parent in the territory to settle permanently. China is concerned about a massive influx of immigrants into its capitalist southern special administrative region. (Signed)

NEB/HK/HB/MAR