Then & now: these were our children
A former terrorist's attempt to justify the planting of bombs in 1967 is an affront to the memory of those killed
Hong Kong was rocked by communist/leftist-fomented civil disturbances during the summer of 1967. Bombs were planted all over the city, and numerous innocent people were killed and maimed.
August was the worst month: dozens of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were discovered and hardly a day passed without one being detonated. Recently, former terrorists involved in these outrages have tried to justify their violent acts. One of them, Kwok Hing-lau, went so far as to proclaim, in the pages of the South China Morning Post, that "planting bombs was a correct and righteous strategy".
Let's examine the impact of this "correct and righteous strategy" on the lives of ordinary Hong Kong people. Forty-five years ago tomorrow, one of the worst outrages of this violent summer took place. The killing of two young children in North Point remains the one 1967 horror story every-one remembers.
Leftists justified themselves then - and still do - by saying they were helping the poorer classes fight the evil colonial oppressors. But overwhelmingly, the evidence suggests otherwise. Many IEDs were specifically designed to appeal to children; one of the devices, left on a pedestrian flyover in Causeway Bay, was housed in a Donald Duck piggy bank. A natural find for an inquisitive child, it was fortunately detonated before anyone was injured. These IEDs were usually daubed with Chinese slogans saying "comrades, keep away" - but, of course, very young children can't read.
Late in the afternoon of August 20, 1967, eight-year-old Wong Yee-man and her two-year-old brother, Wong Siu-fan, were playing near their home in North Point. They found a device near the Kiangsu-Chekiang College - an area that was, unsurprisingly, much frequented by children - carried it back up the hill and started playing with it. Shortly afterwards, there was an enormous explosion.