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HKES
E hong kong federation of students 香港專上學生聯會
18 SEP 1972
NOKI
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23c waterloo road, kowloon hong kong
九龍窩打老道二十三號C
telephone k-888137
telegram "HKFSTUDENT
"
Special Information Release
PRESIDENT CHARGED AND ACQUITTED BY THE BRITISH COLOVIAL AUTHORITIES
Following the arrest of Mr. Thomas Leung, HKFS President and other students on September, 5, the British authorities chagred them for illegal assembly. Court proceedings carried on for three days and all arrested were found guilty. However, the judge passed different sentences on the students, the representatives of the resident-petitioners and the hundred other residents of the Yan Yi Resite Village. The eighteen students and representatives were to go on probation for two years while the others were released without any sentence.
Such decision was arrived at by the judge who in his sentence statement asserted that the trouble was 'stirred up' by the students who had assumed. an initation-organisation role in the whole sit-in of the resident-petitioners, To the resident representatives, the judge concluded that they were exercising wrong leadership.
In our last (Special Information Release', we have briefly presented the background of the whole incident. The residents of Yan Yi Resite Village, like many othersfin other resite areas of the Colony had long been making requests for resettlement which the goernment had promised at the time they were moved into these resite areas, Their requests are well justified not only becuase the colonial government should not set aside its promise or play any delaying tactics, but also because the living conditions in these resite areas are appalling. Electricity and water are often short of supply not to mention the shabby conditions of the squatter huts in these resite areas. Residents in those rasite areas are fed up with the delaying tactics and even indifference shown by the authorities concern. We believe, the Yan Yi resite Village petition rally is but the first of those future actions to be taken by resite residents to urge the government to realise its promise of resettlement. In fact the entire petition rally was initiated and organixed by the residents of Yan Yi Village. They had decided to deliver petitions to the goverticx once every two days until a satisfactory reply is heard from the governgent. The first of the scheduled series of petitions was staged on September 5, the day of the arrest. The petition rally had to move a long way, starting from their resite village to the government house. Because of over-exhaustion of the aged, the women and the very young in the rally, all gathered and sit outside the City Hall building in Central
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