Secret Societies Doomed

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31775, 4 September 1968, Page 10

Secret Societies Doomed

(N.Z.P. A.Reuter—Copyright) HONG KONG. The mysterious, centuries-old secret triad societies, as traditional a part of Imperial China as Mandarin officials and decorated porcelain, are on the wane.

These societies, outlawed for more than 100 years in the British colony, are still believed to have an active membership of several thousands and their rituals and exotic paraphernalia remain a strictly guarded secret. Today, however, they are little more than Mafia-style syndicates. In recent years, police say, the triad leadership has been broken, office bearers have been deported in their hundreds, and the societies have split into jealous, unco-ordinated gangs.

The sinister aura of triads, which date back deep into Chinese history as a group bound by blood ties and oaths to overthrow the Manch Chi’ing dynasty in the seventeenth century, is maintained by the belief that, even now, full details of the complex initiation ritual have not been revealed.

Some of the ritual has not even been committed to paper. In earlier days sumray execution awaited those incautious enough to breathe a word of their secrets to outsiders.

But experts on triads warn against comparing the secret societies’ aims with the Western world’s Freemasonary, itself surrounded by secrecy but geared to philanthropic aims. “Present-day triads are nothing but evil,” according to the man who heads the British colony’s special triad bureau. Chief Superintendent Patrick Macmahon.

Police in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, even the United States—in fact anywhere with a sizeable overseas Chinese population—-

still have their files on local offshoots of the original triads. But in China itself, and in Hong Kong, the peak of the triads' activity was reached in 1912, when Dr Sun Yat Sen, himself a one-time triad member, established the Republic of China, and the societies’ prime political object—the overthrow of "foreign conquerors” had been realised.

Throughout the previous century they had flourished unchecked, as a great force of opposition in the 'vast empire. Present-day triad activities centre of prostitution, protection, street-gambling, dopepeddling, ticket-scalping, and vendettas.

Even to the local population they have become known as “black societies” though police are still concerned at the pull the triad’s mystery and botherhood has on the colony's young people. Chief Superintendent Macmahon, who heads a team of 30 police officers and detectives in the triad bureau, says the problem of the syndicates is now “under control.”

Their grip on Hong Kong society, he claims, was dislodged in the late 19505, after the triads had fanned the 1956 Kowloon riots into bloodshed.

In the following years there were thousands of prosecutions against triad members, or those caught with society symbols or literature.