TNAG-0072-FCO40-108-Annual-report-on-the-colony-s-affairs-for-1967-1968 — Page 22

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groups of communista formed up at the bottom of Garden Road and demanded to

be allowed to pass through the police cordon on their way to Government House.

Permission was refused and there ware a number of scuffles in the vicinity.

The crowd, which had grown to more than a thousand, was dispersed by tear gas

and by the early evening the situation was quiet.

The next day the communists returned to the attack and it soon became

clear that they had planned a propaganda 'incident'. Groups of people again

formed up in Garden Road and the Folice wore again subjected to a barrage of

heckling and abuse. Crowds were building up in near-by Statue Square and the

loudspeakers at the Bank of China boomed out a continual stream of threats and

the

appeals to violence. In this daunting atmosphere ine Police quietly stood

their ground and in an impressive display of discipline ignored both the verbal

provocation to which they were subjected, as well as the threatening gestures

of the mob that faced them. But the communists were out to provoke violence.

A constable was kicked and others were attacked. The Police moved forward to

arrest the men responsible. There was a general melee and the Police used

their batons. At once many of the demonstrators fell to the ground whether

they had been hit or not; bandages (some of them already provided with artificial

'bloodstains') were produced and applied; the blood of those who had really been

injured was liberally daubed on others. The results of these childish

expedients were duly photographed by the communist press and subsequently

published as evidence of Folice brutality, though what little effect this

might have had was spoiled by the crowds of witnesses looking on from the

Hilton Hotel as well as by the full coverage of the scene by impartial press

and television photographers.

Further domonstrators appeared during the day and some buses and taxis

were abandoned in the area, in an attempt to cause traffic jams and to add to

the confusion. There was intermittent violence in Queen's Road and the ajoin-

ing streets and at 6.30 p.m., for the first time since the war,

imposed in Hong Kong Island.

а curfew was

It soon became apparent that anti-Government propaganda and the spreading

of false and malicious rumours was to be a major weapon in the communists'

tactics.

Communist newspapers published highly distorted accounts of the events

that were taking place, designed to present the Police and Government in the

worst possible light, and accompanied, as in the case of the listurbances of

the 22nd May, by contrived or unashamedly faked photographs.

fabricated with the intention of spr

Rumours were

on an panic; some plausible

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