Powerful rural body defends Hong Kong small-house policy in top court, takes aim at ‘busybody’ challenger
- Heung Yee Kuk says controversial policy allowing male indigenous villagers to build small houses is a ‘constitutionally protected’ right
- Lawyers for appellant Kwok Cheuk-kin say Hong Kong has been waiting for years for someone to challenge the disputed policy
Hong Kong’s rural powerhouse, the Heung Yee Kuk, has defended the controversial policy of allowing male indigenous villagers to build small houses as a “constitutionally protected” right, telling the city’s top court it cannot be challenged by a “busybody” after an exceptional delay.
But lawyers for the appellant, Kwok Cheuk-kin, a retired civil servant who has challenged the government so many times he is nicknamed the “king of judicial reviews”, countered that the disputed policy affected everyone, considering the shortage of “decent housing”.
“Hong Kong has been waiting for so many years for someone to challenge this policy,” Martin Lee Chu-ming SC said on Tuesday, with reference to his client. “I waited, too. Everybody did. Nobody did anything until this ‘busybody’.”
The Court of Final Appeal on Tuesday heard the last round of arguments in the unprecedented constitutional challenge to the small-house policy, which confers “Ding rights” to male indigenous villagers descended from the male line to apply for building a three-storey home in villages of the New Territories.
Both the government and the kuk, which represents the villagers’ interests, have conceded that the policy is “inherently discriminatory on the grounds of social origin or birth and sex”, contrary to equality provisions in the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution.
