How Nepalese Gurkhas helped put down the 1960s riots in Hong Kong

This article is an edited excerpt from the book Gurkha Oddysey: Campaigning for the Crown by Peter Duffell.

We had our first taste of impending troubles in Hong Kong caused by the Cultural Revolution during the Easter holiday of 1966.

On April 6 in the late afternoon, we had returned to Queen's Hill (a barracks located in the northern part of Hong Kong) from a battalion-command-post exercise testing our vehicle-mounted radio systems. We were looking forward to the Easter break.

We picked up some news of rioting in Kowloon and decided that we would leave the radios mounted in the vehicles in case a call came. At 1am that call did indeed come.

Without warning, we were rudely awakened by the brigade duty officer and told to move the battalion immediately to Kowloon in support of the police to help contain serious and widespread rioting.

I harried the company commanders and Gurkha officers to rouse their men and load our internal security equip-ment, weapons and ammunition.

Aside from echoes of the Cultural Revolution to the north, the immediate catalyst for the severe Kowloon disturbances was a protest at the raising by 5 cents of the first-class fare on the Star Ferries that operated between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.

But the three nights of disturbances were symptomatic of broader social discontents " the gap between rich and poor and the frustrated ambitions of the young.

The density of the population in the urban area of Kowloon allowed rioting to spread rapidly. What was evident when we arrived was that the disturbances " rioting and looting, the long lines of burnt-out buses " had by the early hours exhausted the police.

Additional assistance was urgently required. The center of the disturbances was a broad road in Kowloon and its immediate byways.

For young officers such as me, it was a very different feeling from earlier social expeditions as we marched through Kowloon.

We were in full internal security order and were pelted with flowerpots and other bric-a-brac from the balconies above.

The riflemen were wearing their Gurkha hats, both as protective headgear and to signal militarily who was about. I quickly noted that the reputation of the Gurkha soldier was such that the hostile crowds melted away as we moved forward.

We fired not a shot, nor was tear gas used. Banners and bugles, the somewhat archaic internal security apparatuses of the time designed to encourage crowds to disperse before the use of more lethal weaponry, remained unused.

For the following three days we enforced a curfew. We cordoned off the worst affected areas and guarded sensitive places such as Kai Tak airport. We also acted in support of the police in crowd control.

Our presence seemed to be both effective and welcomed, and by the end of the Easter holiday we were back in our barracks.

These disturbances in Kowloon were but a prelude to events in the hot and steamy summer a year later, when the tremors of the Cultural Revolution surfaced strongly in Hong Kong, inspired by communist cadres to the north urging on their radical supporters across the border.

There was mounting industrial unrest, rioting and a bombing campaign, with many hundreds of incidents recorded.

A fever of violence overtook the territory. Hotels and shops were boarded up, and Mao Zedong's "little red books" seemed to be waved everywhere, not least in front of Government House.

Some 50 police and civilians were killed and several hundred injured during a campaign designed to test, if not engineer the collapse of, the colonial government.

Events took a dangerous turn on the border. I kept a close track of what occurred and locked away the lessons learned at that time about border integrity, readiness and restraint. On the border the Chinese militia were actively involved in creating pressure and mayhem.

One incident impressed me with not only its potential seriousness but also the style of its successful resolution. At that stage, the Hong Kong Police had primary responsibility for the security of the border.

The army was in a secondary supporting role, and 1st battalion, 10th Gurkhas were the designated Frontier Battalion on standby to be deployed to the border if required.

A firm but non-provocative response to intimi-dation was very much the policy.

Police Special Branch had learned that a demonstration, coupled with an attempt to remove and burn the Union Jack, would take place on June 24 at the small border police station in the town of Sha Tau Kok, near the border with China.

The police had ensured that roadblocks and a cordon were in place to thwart such an attack.

As predicted, 200 rioting people, many of them disguised as Chinese militiamen, stormed the cordon.

They had been dispersed by the police use of baton rounds and tear gas, albeit with some casualties on both sides. The area was then reinforced with an additional platoon of Pakistani riot police.

By Saturday, July 8, there were 86 Hong Kong Chinese and Pakistani police based at the border police post, with a Police Tactical Unit company of four anti-riot platoons " some 100 or more men " about 250 yards behind it.

On the Chinese side of the border and to the rear of Sha Tau Kok were elements of 7085 Border Regiment from the People's Liberation Army.

During the morning, a large crowd built up on the Chinese side of the border. At around 11am, a crowd of several hundred surged across the border assaulting the police with bottles, stones and fish bombs " dynamite used illegally by the locals to stun fish.

With the police under some pressure, the Tactical Unit to their rear formed up eight abreast in anti-riot formation and began to march forward to reinforce their colleagues.

Imme-diately and cruelly, a Chinese medium machine gun opened fire on the advancing unit, killing one policeman and wounding others.

The unit scattered and dived for cover. Police in the Sha Tau Kok post and buildings close by were targeted by Chinese sniper fire and more police were killed and wounded.

The police were neither equipped nor trained to respond to this kind of attack. They had only a few carbines and shotguns, and they were not allowed to fire across the border.

They fought back and wounded some Chinese militia but were hopelessly outmatched. By this stage, five policemen had been killed and 11 wounded.

Fire was not returned " it was deemed not to be effec-tive. What was effective was the sight of armed and well-disciplined Gurkha soldiers together with armored cars advancing deliberately but tactically towards Sha Tau Kok.

It was sufficient to make those Chinese who had been on British territory quickly melt away, taking their wounded comrades with them.

The leading company of the Gurkha Battalion reached the police post at about 4.30pm, and by 5pm the British ground of Sha Tau Kok had been secured.

Defensive positions were erected on top of commanding buildings, and the difficult evacuation of police dead and wounded got under way.

As a result of the Sha Tau Kok incident and consequent considerable damage to police morale, the British Army assumed prime responsibility from the police for border security.

Weeks of political demonstrations, provocation, insults and intimidation directed against the Gurkhas manning the border followed.

Occasionally, machine-gun fire would be directed over the heads of soldiers in their defensive positions. The Chinese were attempting to engineer a dramatic confrontation with the British security forces.

No shots, apart from the use of gas and smoke grenades, were ever fired across the border by our troops in that long, hot summer.

Together with the Gurkhas, the British and Hong Kong governments had stood firm and refused to kowtow to pressure as a result of these disturbances.

Some Hong Kong Chinese millionaires departed the territory for the safety of Vancouver, Canada, or elsewhere, but the British continued to play cricket on their ground in Central and the governor could occasionally be seen on the golf course at Fanling.

By the end of the summer the disturbances began to decline in the face of the sturdy resilience of the Hong Kong people, the tenacity of its government and the restraint and sensitive handling of provocation on the border by the Gurkha battalions.

Fundamental, too, was the issuing of orders by the Chinese authorities to cool the ardor of their supporters.

Mao's intention had been to provoke a kowtow from the British, not to take back Hong Kong "ahead of time."

It was economically too valuable as it was.

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