HONG KONG INCIDENT Chinese Abduct Police Officer

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31501, 16 October 1967, Page 13

HONG KONG INCIDENT Chinese Abduct Police Officer

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) HONG KONG, October 15. The Hong Kong Government today closed the frontier bridge at Man Kam To after yesterday’s incident, when a European police inspector was seized by mainland Chinese farmers and dragged over the bridge into Chinese territory.

An official spokesman said the closure was “inevitable in view of the lawless behaviour of those people who had been allowed to enter British territory to carry on farming and normal trade.”

The abduction was the fourth on the Chinese-Hong Kong border within eight days.

It came as the inspector was discussing a dispute with the Chinese over the setting-up of a wire barricade in 1962 on land near the border crossing point owned by one of the mainlanders. The spokesman today said the name of the adbucted man was Inspector F. G. Knight, a bachelor, aged 38. He joined the Hong Kong police in March, 1954.

The closure of the bridge at Man Kam To, a road crossing point in the central part of the 17-mile frontier, is the second in about two months. The bridge was closed on August 11 after Chinese porters armed with iron hooks crossed over it into Hong Kong, disarmed security officials and extracted a threepoint declaration from British officials.

The Hong Kong Government later rejected the declaration, claiming it was signed under duress.

Gurkhas Act It was reopened on August 25, but on the same day people from the Chinese side launched violent attacks on the barricade at the bridge. They were driven back by Gurkha garrison troops firing tear-gas grenades. Shortly after the August 11 closure, the Gurkhas began pulling down an immigration building 50 yards from the bridge. It was part of an over-all plan to move back all structures from the immediate border area since the British military authorities decided the buildings were “indefensible” from attacks by mainland Chinese intruders.

Exploding bombs injured 27 people yesterday as Peking sympathisers stepped up their campaign of terror to mark the visit to the colony of Lord Shepherd, British Minister of State for Commonwealth Affairs.

The police dealt with a record number of 200 bomb scares by midnight, but only 50 of the objects planted in various parts of Hong Kong turned out to be real bombs. Three police inspectors, a police constable, an Army ammunition expert and four children were among the injured. Bomb On Track Bomb scares blocked traffic for long periods in Happy Valley, where the season’s first horse racing was taking place. One bomb was found on

the race track itself and racing was held up for 15 minutes while Army experts removed and detonated it.

Two police inspectors directing traffic around a number of suspected bombs

outside a busy market and eight Chinese bystanders were injured by a bomb thrown from a nearby building.

About an hour earlier, eight people, including four young boys and a woman, were injured in two separate explosions in the same area. Two bombs were found on cross-harbour ferries, while another reported outside the main post office in Hong Kong island turned out to be a dummy after it had disrupted busy Saturday traffic for nearly two hours. The police authorities have offered rewards totalling SHKIOO,OOO for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for two explosions on Friday night in which a policeman and an 18-year-old youth were killed. Three arrests have been made so far in connection with bomb planting. As police patrols roared through the city today to investigate bomb scares, Lord Shepherd, who arrived on Friday for talks with the Governor, Sir David Trench, was meeting civic leaders in the New Territories adjoining mainland China. He also flew over the area in a helicopter to inspect local development projects.