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布政司署
香港下亞畢道
本署檔號 OUR REF.:
SCR 3/3371/80
YOUR Ref.:
CONFIDENTIAL
5
Покрі
done
AF251
GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG KONG
R. J. F. Hoare, Esq.,
HK&GD, FCO.
23 July 1982
HKK 361|1
Dear Richard,
Land in the Kowloon Walled City
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Ruf 1218 Pho 1318
@
HKK 361/2
1981
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Please refer to my letter of 31 December 1981 to Patrick Williamson, and Patrick's reply of 19' January. The implications of paragraph 11 of the then Crown Solicitor's opinion enclosed in my letter under reference have now been fully considered. The conclusionsS
reached are as follows:
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(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
The possibility that adverse possessors in the Kowloon Walled City might have acquired a lease-hold interest greater than that of the Crown in the land they occupy has been revised and restated. The Crown's interest in land in the New Territories is not a lease-hold one: although the Second Convention of Peking of 1898 leases land to the United Kingdom, it is a treaty and not a lease. The Crown therefore has full sovereignty over the New Territories even though this is limited in time.
There is therefore no doubt about the right of the Crown to take statutory powers to resume land in the Walled City and to nullify by Ordinance any prescriptive rights which adverse possession may have conferred on its inhabitants. This could be done by abolishing the limitation period of 60 years.
The Attorney General is, however, opposed to such a move either generally or in this particular area for practical and humanitarian reasons. If no provision for compensation were to be made, this would be demonstrably unfair to the inhabitants of the Walled City who are a pretty touchy lot.
The Attorney General has proposed that legislation be drafted which provides for compulsory acquisition and compensation in respect of prescribed land (including any such land in the Kowloon Walled City) on the same lines that resumptions are conducted in the Colony. New legislation is required because, in the absence of any Crown leases granted to alleged adverse possessors such as the inhabitants of the Walled City, the Crown Lands Resumption Ordinance cannot apply.
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CONFIDENTIAL