At least 10 residents of Sheung Shui’s Kwu Tung Village are bereft of their homes, after the houses were flattened by bulldozers in minutes yesterday morning.
Speaking to Apple Daily, a resident surnamed Lau said that she had gone out for breakfast when a neighbour called her at around 8am, saying their homes had been razed to the ground, and that the bulldozers’ operators disappeared.
Looking at the pile of rubble and metal sheeting that was formerly her home, Lau lamented that she wasn’t even given any prior notice, saying “Everything I had is gone.”
A reported total of three single-storey squatter homes were razed, uprooting at least 10 members of the families they housed.
Speaking to the SCMP, a resident surnamed Wong said, “My father settled here in the 1950s, joined by my grandfather and me from the mainland in the 1960s – three generations of painstaking work all gone in just few minutes.”
When asked if she had been contacted by developers in the past, Lau said she received a letter from Team Glory Development — a subsidiary of Henderson Land Development Co. — in 2009. The letter reportedly claimed that the firm owned the land that the families were squatting on, and asked them to move.
Yet, Lau says that the residents had not come to any agreement with developers. “How could they tear our homes down like this? These things are supposed to be discussed, and agreed upon,” Lau said.
SCMP reports that a spokesperson for Henderson stated that the squatters’ homes were not on Henderson land, and said that neither the parent nor the subsidiary company were behind the bulldozing.
The incident was reported to the police, who are treating the case as criminal damage. No arrests have been made so far.
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