Witnesses to anarchy: the 1967 riots in Hong Kong, by some of those caught up in the violence
It was the bloodiest violence the city had seen: the riots would leave 51 people dead and hundreds more injured. We talk to some of the people involved to make sense of events that forever changed Hong Kong
Fifty-one people killed and more than 800 injured. More than 8,000 “bombs” detonated (most in controlled explosions), of which as many as 1,100 were real. These are figures that will be echoed in the coming weeks as Hong Kong marks 50 years since the start of the biggest and most violent mass disturbances in the city’s history.
But it’s not until you speak to those who lived through the riots of May to December 1967 that you begin to see past the numbers and understand the profound ways in which that chaotic period shaped the city and the identity of its people.
Hong Kong was a very different place half a century ago. Many of its people were refugees from the turmoil then engulfing China, who made their homes in squalid squatter camps.
“The hillsides were covered in shantytowns where they had no running water or toilets,” recalls James Elms, a police inspector at the time. “Jobs were few and employers could pick and choose who they wanted. It was hell, but somehow people survived. This was fertile ground to nurture a spirit of dissatisfaction.”