1887-1903
COLONIAL REPORTS.-ANNUAL.
17
barefaced assaults in broad daylight and in the most frequented thoroughfares upon any unoffending individual members of the opposite faction whom they might chance to meet. These assaults appear to have been timed so as to elude the vigilance of the police and the armed patrols, and the numerous eye-witnesses were intimidated into silence. In the meanwhile some 12,000 coolies ceased work through fear of exposing themselves to attack, and for four days all work on board the steamers in the harbour was suspended. Peace was eventually restored by the arrest of 13 men who were found carrying arms in the streets and were doubtless implicated in the riot, and by a thorough police search of all suspected coolie-houses and clubs, which led to the flight of the ringleaders, and the coolies eventually returned to work, after some persuasion, under police protection.
The disturbance had no political significance—clan fights in China being of frequent occurrence and often resulting in considerable loss of life—but it caused a serious inconvenience to the shipping, and revealed the existence in our midst of a class of ruffians dangerous to the safety of the community, the most prominent of whom have since been banished from the Colony. It further revealed the necessity of imposing additional restrictions on the sale of arms and of introducing a law for the registration of Chinese clubs, and steps have been, or are being, taken in those directions accordingly.
There were also 9 serious gang robberies during the year, and except in one case the perpetrators of these outrages made good their escape. Unhappily the only robbery in which the police were successful in bringing the offenders to justice was attended by loss of life—an Indian constable and a Chinese coolie being shot dead in the affray which followed the discovery of the thieves. Two of the gang were eventually hanged for murder, and three others were sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment with hard labour.
The difficulties of the police in preventing these crimes or in tracing the offenders can only be fairly estimated with a knowledge of local circumstances. The assailants are in most cases apparently respectable Chinese, dressed in the orthodox long coat with voluminous sleeves, which afford a convenient place of concealment for fire-arms or other deadly weapons; they enter a Chinese shop, ostensibly for the purpose of making a purchase, and, taking the unsuspecting shopmen unawares, throw pepper or some other substance in their eyes, and, covering them with revolvers, proceed to ransack the shop for money or other valuables. Active resistance is seldom, if ever, offered, and, after collecting their spoils and intimidating the wretched storekeeper and his staff into silence, the thieves take their departure in the quietest manner. Thus, unless they are caught red-handed, the police rarely, if ever, have a fair opportunity of arresting these criminals through lack of timely information. In many instances no report is made of these crimes until days after their occurrence. There is, perhaps, no Colony in which police duties are so varied and so responsible
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