Remarks come as police launch a criminal probe and villagers theorise a land exchange dispute fuelled the bulldozing in their New Territories community
ALLEN.AUYEUNG@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Thursday, 17 March, 2016, 1:39pm
A man views debris after bulldozers flattened squatter homes in Kwu Tung North village in Sheung Shui. Photo: Felix Wong
The Hong Kong government on Wednesday night denounced the demolition of civilian homes by illegal or violent means to evict occupiers after two households of squatter huts in a remote Sheung Shui village had their homes mysteriously destroyed on Monday.
A government spokeswoman told the Post police had launched a criminal investigation of the incident and that authorities could not comment on whether the razing was linked to an individual land exchange application.
On Monday, squatter huts occupied by two families for several decades were suddenly flattened by an unidentified group when no one was around.
In total over a dozen structures – ranging from huts to chicken sheds, with some connected to one another – were reduced to rubble. The occupiers were now living with their families elsewhere. No arrests had yet been made.
The Lands Department on Wednesday highlighted key land exchange policy requirements to facilitate new town development in Kwu Tung North in the New Territories. Villagers there suspected a land exchange matter to be a factor behind the destruction.
Yet the exact cause of the incident remained unclear. The department said it received no land exchange application from the owner of the land on which a portion of the smashed squatter huts stood.
In a strongly-worded statement, a department spokeswoman said land owners must use lawful means to deal with occupiers.
“Whether or not [the incident] involves land exchange applications, any land owners must use ways conforming to Hong Kong laws” to handle matters with land occupiers, the spokeswoman said, adding that attempts to use forced demolition “to facilitate in-situ land exchange applications will not be successful”.
A police investigation was launched after the surprise demolition took place on Monday. Photo: Felix Wong
“The government will carefully pay attention to in-situ land exchange applicants on whether or not they had compensated any affected people in accordance with the application conditions,” she said.
One condition for a land exchange application to be approved was that a land owner must have given the affected occupiers compensation comparable to prevailing ex-gratia compensation, excluding a rehousing entitlement, offered by the government to other residents affected by the new town development.
In-situ land exchange is a mechanism under which developers could apply to the department to modify lease conditions for the land they owned to directly pave the way for private residential development.
Allowing such practices in areas planned for private development in Kwu Tung North and Fanling North, according to the Development Bureau’s website information, meant the government would not need to take back the existing private land in the area and resell it later for development.
This in turn, the bureau stated, “could expedite housing supply and would not affect the overall planning or the timely and orderly provision of infrastructure and community facilities”.
However, the ethics of the policy were questioned by Kwu Tung North villagers, such as Wong Man-fa and Lau Chau-pik, after the squatter huts they and their families claimed to have lived in for several decades were flattened.
Wong and Lau, who said they had disputes with land owners dating to the 1990s, suspected a land exchange application triggered the demolition because one of the requirements developers must meet for such applications was to show the Lands Department they could “deliver vacant possession” of the land they sought to develop and that the occupiers had accepted compensation.
In Wong’s case, his demolished huts were built across two adjacent plots of land. One plot was under the ownership of Henderson Land Development’s subsidiary, Team Glory Development. The other plot, according to land records, was owned by off-shore company Wise Treasure Development Corp. Team Glory was applying for a land exchange for its plot of land.
However, in response to Post enquiries as to whether an application was made for the plot under Wise Treasure’s ownership, the Lands Department spokeswoman said it had not received one.
A Henderson spokeswoman repeatedly emphasised after the incident it and its subsidiary had nothing to do with the demolition and that they were also victims of what had happened.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1926356/hong-kong-officials-slam-squatter-homes-demolition-urge
