Why Lan Kwai Fong has seen a surge in African drug dealers: SCMP goes undercover with the Hong Kong police
The streets of Lan Kwai Fong, the city's best known entertainment district, have seen a sharp rise in drug dealing. Anna Healy Fenton and photographer Dean Cox investigate the trend, and why some asylum seekers feel crime is their best option.
Waiting nervously to be tested for HIV and other diseases was the last thing Mike - not his real name - expected to be doing at nine o'clock on a hot Monday morning in July.
The undercover police officer had been bitten on the upper arm by Gilbert Muasa, a 23-year-old Kenyan drug dealer who had resisted arrest after being caught selling cocaine late at night on Hollywood Road, in Central.
As a matter of precaution, Mike underwent a blood test.
Muasa bit a second undercover officer before being handcuffed and bundled into an unmarked police van. The African has been in Hong Kong since last year, seeking asylum on the grounds that he faces torture in his home nation. On September 8, Eastern Court jailed him for 12 months for supplying dangerous drugs, four weeks for each bite and two weeks for obstructing the police, to be served consecutively.
The Kenyan turned to the drug trade after struggling to survive on official handouts, he says; asylum seekers in Hong Kong cannot legally work in the territory.
A year ago, the drug trade in Central's Lan Kwai Fong and SoHo became so blatant that anyone walking along Wyndham or D'Aguilar streets at night would probably have had to run the gauntlet of several dealers.
The hub of this drug activity is at the elbow of D'Aguilar Street, opposite Stormies bar, where a 7-Eleven opened at the beginning of last year. The relatively small district of LKF is now home to six of these convenience stores, dubbed Club 7/11 by some patrons, selling cheap booze and encouraging more revellers to drink on the street.
