More than 10 prison officers formed a wall to separate rioting Hong Kong and Vietnamese inmates but were unable to keep them apart, a union leader said yesterday.
A supervisory officer, whose tendons in both arms were damaged, was among them, said Stephen Wong Wai-hung, Correctional Services Officers' Association chairman.
'The supervisor told me correctional officers attempted to keep Vietnamese inmates away from local inmates. But the move was misunderstood by local inmates who thought officers intended to protect the Vietnamese. When inmates' emotions were running high, officers used their bodies to form a wall to separate them, but in vain,' Mr Wong said. He said the officer told him his colleagues feared for their lives, realising the limited number of officers could not deal with the hundreds of inmates.
A fireman surnamed Cheung called Commercial Radio's Teacup in a Storm phone-in programme yesterday complaining he and his colleagues, mistaken by inmates for correctional services officers, were attacked as they tried to put out a fire.
He complained that he, two ambulancemen and six firemen were not protected in the operation. 'I am not sure whether the administrators were aware of the danger out there when they deployed us. We were taken there by helicopter and Correctional Services Department vehicles. We were told there were a number of casualties and a fire.
'We need to save lives. But when we got there, we saw many inmates using weapons to attack us. We had to withdraw from the scene. My mind was blank. I thought I was going to be killed.