3. THE ON LOK CHUEN CASE
1. RIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE EVENT
The eviction
On May 27, 1979, six trucks of armed policemen (more than 100) were sent to clear seven huss in let 16, On Lok Chuen, a village in Fanling (a rural area in Hong Kong). When the villagers refused to leave their homes, the policemen fired twenty-five rounds of teargas bombs into the village, rushed inside, broke down doors, beat up the villagers and arrested twenty- four of them. They were later charged with UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY.
Out of the 24 arrested, 18 of them were not residents of Lot 16, but rather were in Lot 15 which was not within the eviction order. For further details of the incident and preceding events which led to the confrontation of the police with the villagers, please refer to Appendix 1, a report preparted by a social worker to publicize the true story of the incident. We had to do so because the police had made up another story in the newspaper saying that the police were attacked by the villagers first, in order to cover up their own violence done to the people. (Appendix 2)
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The trial before court The first hearing of the trial was on June 11 at Fanling Magistracy. Besides the charge of unlawful assembly, 20 more charges were added to some of the defendants. These included assaulting police, possession of offensive weapons and resisting arrest. One young girl was charged with assaulting an European police officer whom she had never seen before. Naturally, all defendants pleaded not guilty. (Appendix 3) The second hearing Was on August 2, because there was no judge available on that day, the hearing was adjourned. Charge of unlawful assembly for 18 defendants was changed to "obstructing police".
Finally the third hearing started on August 8 and ended on August 22. During this lang period of trial, the prosecution had more than 30 witnesses and produced strong but false evidence. For example, pictures were produced showing villagers holding soya sauce bottles as evidence of offensive
weapons. In fact, they were forced to hold these bottles picked
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