Urn firm claims it's running a shrine
When is a columbarium not a columbarium? When it's a shrine.
That's the contention of a company - set on expanding its niche business - that has launched an unlikely legal challenge to the government's definition of a columbarium.
The Hong Kong Life Group, which runs The Shrine in a converted historic New Territories house, argues that because people will pay homage to their dead relatives' ashes in niches at the house, it is - as its name says - a shrine and, therefore, allowed under planning rules.
Several columbarium operators are challenging planning rules that the government says they have breached, and have asked town planners to rezone their land to make the storage of funerary urns legal.
Hong Kong faces a severe shortage of public niches for burial urns, and the problem is expected to get worse given the population is ageing. As the government looks for answers, private operators are stepping in to take up the slack.
A High Court writ filed yesterday by Hong Kong Life seeks leave for a judicial review of a Planning Department decision that stopped the business in its tracks.
According to the writ, on October 22 the department issued an enforcement notice ordering Hong Kong Life, which converted the house in Ngau Tam Mei, Yuen Long, into a repository for human ashes, to stop running the business. Officials said that it was an unauthorised development. The company, which is listed on the stock exchange's Growth Enterprise Market (GEM), said the area's outline zoning plan allowed shrines to be erected without restriction.
Under the plan columbariums may be authorised, but may be subject to conditions, the writ contends.
The Planning Department says a shrine is a place or structure other than a building for worship, while a columbarium is any place or vault with niches or urns containing the ashes of cremated bodies.
At present, The Shrine, designed to store 2,100 urns, houses 11 caskets.
Hong Kong Life argues that the department's decision is flawed and unreasonable.
It accuses officials of failing to appreciate the real nature of the 'shrine business', saying planners wrongly concluded that the building was used for columbarium and storage purposes.
The writ says 'the object of worship or devotion or veneration in a shrine is not confined to a saint or deity, but can be a person' and suggests it is a Chinese custom for people to worship the dead by setting up shrines at home or in other places.
The company argues that the zoning plan has no restrictions on the objects that can be placed in a shrine and that, even if niches or urns containing human ashes are put in a shrine, it is still a shrine.
It further claims that each casket in the building is a shrine and the building a repository of shrines.
The company wants the court to quash the decision that its business is unauthorised and seeks an injunction to prevent further government action against it.
A Planning Department letter to the Columbarium Concern Group, a campaign organisation fighting columbariums, says it considers planning rules clearly differentiate such facilities from shrines.
End product
The number of urns columbarium firm Hong Kong Life hopes to store in The Shrine, a converted historic house: 2,100
