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Sherry Lee

The wreckers arrived one late July afternoon as  Ko Shun took a nap. Awakened by the roar of an excavator and walls collapsing, the 80-year-old ran outside to discover her garden being ripped up and her half-century-old hut torn down. 
The man supervising the demolition was a village 'triad', she said.
'As I ran to the front to stop them, the man dragged me away saying, 'It's OK, you will be compensated with a lot of money.' My blouse was ripped and I fell to the ground.'
Today her garden in San Wai Tsuen, Yuen Long, lies under a cement road leading to The Shrine, a columbarium developed by listed company Aptus.  
Ko's story is not uncommon.  Many residents have found their homes under siege as entrepreneurs have launched a flurry of private columbarium projects in the last few years to try to cash in on a shortage of funeral niches for the 47,000 people who die in Hong Kong each year.
Eddie Tse Sai-kit,  convenor of the  Columbarium Concern Group,  said his organisation was helping more than half a dozen families who were being forced out of their homes. 'Strangers suddenly turn up and say, 'Your land belongs to us.' They show them the legal documents and even police cannot stop them,' Tse said.
Tse  set up his group in January and is also fighting on behalf of 12 villages in the New Territories and four urban districts opposing columbarium developments. 
 A government consultation process aimed at finding a solution to the problem ends today.  But, according to district councillors, instead of addressing the issue, the  process  has accelerated building of the facilities  as developers have sought to circumvent any future legislative clamps on their projects. 
Tse said developers usually targeted homes where the ownership of the land was unclear, and some demolished dwellings when the owners were out. 
 He and several other sources involved in the issue also claimed that some land might have been acquired by false declaration by village heads, who certified someone as the occupant to apply for possession. 
Land law specialist Daniel Wong Kwok-tung  said it was unlikely that village heads would conspire with developers to give false evidence because it was a criminal offence. 
He said that apart from the village head's testimony, the judge needed to consider other evidence such as water and electricity bills  to grant adverse possession, also known as squatter's rights.
An Aptus spokesman said the company acquired land for The Shrine through a private company called Casdon but did not say whether the private company acquired the land through adverse possession. 
 In August, another San Wai  villager, Tse Man-fu,  52,  led 200 villagers in a rally to oppose the project. Tse Man-fu claims his mother and brothers are being forced out of the family home, a building erected in 1931 that he says was given to his family by his father's uncle.
He said that since June, men had been trying to cut down the trees in front of the house, and that he often received anonymous calls. 
Aptus chairman Lam Wai-pong,  54, said he bought Tse Man-fu's house from three different 'original landlords' but refused to disclose their names. Lam also denied he sent anyone to fell trees or harass Tse Man-fu's mother.
'We surely won't do this. They have the right to call the police. We haven't chopped their trees,' he said.  Lam rejected accusations that he took Ko's garden by force. 'We wouldn't forcibly demolish people's houses,' he said.
Meanwhile, at a home in Kap Lung Village  in Tai Lam Country Park,  villagers were showing Eddie Tse a video of what they called 'their sufferings', disturbances which they fear are part of plans by the village chief to force them out to make way for a columbarium. 
The footage shows a middle-aged man spitting at villagers and using a digger to punch a hole on a resident's brick house, as police officers stand by  without taking action. When the confrontation escalates, a plain clothes officer drags the man away, putting his arm on his shoulder and whispering to him. 
Villagers said this kind of disturbance was a regular part of their daily lives.
'The man came once to twice a week. Each time he came, we would immediately hide at home. He screamed, spat on us, and kicked things,' resident Moon Wong said.
The Wongs said the incidents began after a rural chief initiated legal action against them in a land dispute. They said they had the legal rights to the land under adverse possession because they had lived in the once-deserted village since the 1970s.
But Tsang Hin-keung,  chairman for Pat Heung Rural Committee,  said the village belonged to his ancestors. Tsang wanted the Wongs to move out but denied the man in the video harassed them. 'He is my fellow villager and just returns sometimes to take care of the village,' Tsang said.
Kap Lung villagers have filed 27 reports with Pat Heung Police Station about the man in the video but a police spokesman would not say why charges had not been laid against him. The spokesman would only say that their investigations were conducted in a 'fair and impartial  manner'.
Pressure groups accuse the planning and lands departments of not enforcing the law, even though many projects allegedly breach zoning and lease conditions. Eddie Tse said the Lands Department had the authority to resume a land for breaches of lease conditions but it had only done so twice. A Lands Department spokesman said they were seeking legal advice to determine if the construction work violated the lease conditions. 
Back in San Wai Tsuen, the Lands Department told villagers that they could not enter The Shrine to investigate because it was private land. 
'They are posting adverts and selling niches in shops. What evidence do you need?' Eddie Tse said. 
Lam admitted that his company had put more than 2,000 niches on the market, about 600 of which had already been sold, for HK$20,000-HK$200,000 each.
 Backed by senior counsel, Aptus argues that the sites' village-type development zoning permitted ancestral halls or a shrine. Shrines could be used to house cremated human ashes, their lawyers said. 
Another loophole is the absence of a legal definition of ashes. The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department  does not classify ashes as human bodies. So, Lam said, 'If ashes are just things, we can place them anywhere.'
 Some  columbarium developers keep projects under wraps until they start selling to prevent protests. After the ashes are put in place, the government cannot do anything about it. 
A source familiar with the industry also said operators did not sign sales contracts with buyers, but make an agreement for a storage fee. Lam confirmed that contracts with his clients were for 'provision of storage spaces for cremated ashes'. 
 These are loopholes that Eddie Tse and others want the government to close. 
They want authorities to stop columbariums in breach of land leases or zoning restrictions from operating, to draw up clear laws to regulate columbariums, and to increase the supply of public niches.




Villages torn apart in rural niche rush