| home | contents | mini-tofu | objets | film & video | links | about | contact |
| <1 | >3 >4 >5 |
ted yeung
With worsening social conditions and no sign of changing prospects, the setting in Hong Kong in the mid-1960s was ripe for protest. By mid 67, discontented working people and urban poor from all over the colony wanted to take power back into their own hands and collectively voiced resistance against a colonial regime that blatantly neglected their needs.
In 1966, the proposed Star Ferry fare increase of 5-cents was enough to trigger several nights of larger-scale street rallies in Kowloon (April 5-8). The rallies became violent and have been known since as the Star Ferry Riots.
Although they clearly revealed the prevalent mood of local discontent, it was, however, events in China and Macau that truly helped set the stage for the Hong Kong Maoist-inspired anti-colonial revolts of 1967. The government approval of the Star Ferry fare increase in 1966 affirmed the people’s fear that the colonial government would only add to their miseries during times of economic hardship.
On April 4th, a lone protester called So Sau-Chung initiated the voice of public resistance by hunger-striking at the Star Ferry pier. He voiced his support for Elsie Elliot (now Elsie Tu), a vocal Urban Councillor who opposed the fare-hike and headed a campaign against civil service corruption.
On the following evenings of April 5h to April 8th hundreds of young male protesters took to the streets. They were largely unorganized and did not express any clear political objectives. What they held in common was a distrust of the police who abused their power and a resentment towards the corruption of colonial authorities. As the young males in the street clashed with armed police, other residents expressed their support by throwing garbage and cement from the buildings above.
Despite the apparent public outrage, the colonial government chose to remain staunchly inactive. They responded by commissioning a wordy report, which attempted to blame the disturbances on several young hooligans and targeted Elsie Elliot as an instigator of the riots. Neither colonial corruption nor the
colony’s worsening social conditions were recognised as root causes of the riots in the report.
Apart from local tensions, the atmosphere of the on-going Maoist Cultural Revolution in China and the 1966 Red Guard victory in Macau helped encourage a much larger colony-wide uprising the following year. In 1966, the Red Guards had taken over the colony of Macau and had the Portuguese colonials virtually surrendering to all of the Chinese Communist Party demands. The Portuguese even went as far as offering to surrender Macau and leave the colony but Beijing CCP officials expressed no desire at the time to reclaim Macau — they were preoccupied with a national revolt of their own. Inspired by the 1966 Red Guard victory in Macau, the Maoists in Hong Kong took the opportunity to organise a colony-wide revolt against the British colonial authorities. >3