Hong Kong must face up to communists in its midst
Stephen Vines calls for an honest reassessment of the 1960s riots
Peter Tsang Yu-hung has opened a can of worms by petitioning the chief executive to retrospectively overturn a conviction for illegal assembly in a public place that landed him in jail 45 years ago. Tsang's conviction was one of many made under emergency laws introduced to deal with the spillover in Hong Kong from the Cultural Revolution across the border.
The protests in Hong Kong turned ugly after a prominent journalist was murdered, and many people feared that a revolution would spread to the British colony. Public opinion was largely on the side of the authorities, who started a round-up of people connected with leftist organisations, including the schoolboys Peter Tsang and Tsang Tak-sing, now a government minister, who also served time in jail.
As ever, the authorities overdid things. Although there was a real threat to public security, there was a strong element of revenge in their response.
Peter Tsang's request raises the wider question of how the new Hong Kong administration and its guiding hand in Beijing should treat long-time allies who were either clandestine Communist Party members or sympathisers, a category that includes Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, a student in the 1960s known for his anti-colonial views.
Party membership was illegal in those days and the party operated under the umbrella of the Hong Kong and Macau Work Committee, which embraced, among others, trade unions, newspapers, housing associations and schools, such as the one where Legislative Council president Tsang Yok-sing was principal.
During the war, it was the Communists who led the resistance to the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, while the traditional elite collaborated with some vigour.
Not unreasonably, Hong Kong's leftists expected to be rewarded for their loyalty and efforts once Chinese sovereignty was resumed over the territory. But they were bitterly disappointed as the bosses in Beijing decided to bestow power and honours on those who had previously been stalwarts of the colonial regime.