Tsoi Yuen villagers ordered to leave within two weeks
Harsh reality has arrived for Yuen Long villagers whose homes must make way for the HK$66.9 billion high-speed railway to Guangzhou.
Lands officers who arrived in the farming community of Tsoi Yuen yesterday to start taking back vacant properties told the remaining residents they must be out in two weeks.
'They told us they would come back on November 18 to take our houses. It is a standing line delivered to every villager,' said Ko Chun-heung, who has led a campaign to save her home from destruction since late 2008.
Hundreds of police, highways and lands officers moved into the village early yesterday in the first phase of the land resumption.
The villagers had been hoping they would be able to stay until new homes are built on nearby land they are seeking to buy, but that could take six months even if they can resolve a dispute that is holding up the deal. The Transport and Housing Bureau said the government could not wait endlessly for the villagers to move out.
It also said the railway project involved river realignment, so work must be carried out in the dry season.
Residents staged a noisy protest as Ho Wai-fu, a government engineer in charge of railway development, held a briefing in the village.
They have teamed up with a 100-strong 'defence force' of activists to plan their next move.
All 200 households in Tsoi Yuen Tsuen had been told to leave by Monday to make way for a depot for the railway, which the government says will allow Hong Kong to integrate better with the mainland.
Most have done so, but 50 families who want to rebuild their village at Pat Heung say they cannot move until their new homes are ready.
The government promised to help the villagers build new homes after it won Legco funding approval to build the railway in January.
But Lau Wong-fat, chairman of rural affairs body the Heung Yee Kuk, told a Legco subcommittee meeting on September 20 that existing Pat Heung residents did not want the new neighbours and that the kuk and officials were mediating.
Tsoi Yuen villagers have agreed to forfeit their right to elect the community's representative on the Heung Yee Kuk advisory body. But no deal has been sealed, because the indigenous villagers refuse to let their new neighbours use private roads.
Volunteers who have been working with the villagers against the demolition plan for more than a year and have formed a defence squad say they will patrol the village to ensure villagers are not disturbed by the demolition work.
The Hong Kong leg of the high-speed railway is expected to be completed by 2015.
Time to go
A depot for the HK$66.9 billion railway project is planned for the site
Number of households in Tsoi Yuen Tsuen who have to abandon their homes to make way for the project: 200
