Peter Tsang Yu-hung seeks to clear name over 1967 riots

It has been 45 years since what he terms his unlawful imprisonment during the 1967 riots, but retiree Peter Tsang Yu-hung is asking Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying to help clear his name and that of his family.

Tsang says that apart from blighting his own career as a teacher, the conviction that led to a year behind bars has also blunted the ambition of his son to be a policeman.

Tsang, now 62, was a form-five pupil at the pro-Beijing Heung To Middle School in Kowloon Tong in 1967, when leftist riots against British colonial rule broke out.

He was arrested by police when he was going home on a November afternoon.

"It was around 5pm, and I was together with 51 schoolmates and a teacher, within walking distance [from the school] in Somerset Road," he recalls. "We were stopped by a team of Hong Kong police."

Although the police found no weapons or inflammatory materials in their schoolbags, the students were arrested and placed under detention in Victoria Prison for attending an illegal assembly in a public place under the emergency law in force at the time.

"It was very upsetting and painful and I felt helpless at that time, because I believed that we were innocent," Tsang says. "We were arrested just because we were Heung To students … a month later, we were taken to the court without lawyers representing us and without being given the chance to defend for ourselves. I remember the judge asked me if I would plead guilty. I said 'no', and I was sentenced to about a year in prison along with about 20 other schoolmates."