An advocacy organisation that has fought to protect Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour for nearly 30 years has announced its disbandment more than two months after the government amended a law which the group said could pave the way for large-scale reclamation.
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The Society for Protection of the Harbour said on Friday it had ceased operations the day before, after the Legislative Council approved changes to the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance in May.
“Our society is aiming to protect the harbour under its legal basis, but that has disappeared with the legal amendment,” Winston Chu Ka-sun, the group’s founder and vice-chairman, said.
“I am not sure about the future of the harbour,” the 85-year-old lawyer lamented, adding that it was now in the hands of the younger generation to continue efforts to push for the harbour’s protection.
Chu founded the society in 1995 to protect the harbour against excessive reclamation, leading to the enactment of the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance in 1997.
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The existing legal regime bans reclamation in Victoria Harbour unless the government proves to a court that a project has an “overriding public need” and is supported by “cogent and convincing materials”.