Help me find some history on this fascinating topic!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 12, 1988
Crime Gangs Exercise Vast Power in Hong Kong
By BARBARA BASLER, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
LEAD: Yan Sui Kuen was only 10 years old when, in a secret midnight ceremony on a Hong Kong rooftop, he swore eternal allegiance to a triad, one of the colony's infamous organized crime gangs.
Yan Sui Kuen was only 10 years old when, in a secret midnight ceremony on a Hong Kong rooftop, he swore eternal allegiance to a triad, one of the colony's infamous organized crime gangs.
Eleven young people were initiated that hot summer night, each one *****ing his middle finger and squeezing drops of blood into a cup. After the blood was mixed with water, each youngster drank from the cup, as 40 adult triad members, wearing white headbands, watched beneath the group's brilliant red banner.
''The ceremony was very long,'' Mr. Yan, now 42, recalled. ''They read many lessons and made us swear to many things.''
The gangs are called triads because their mystic literature emphasizes a three-way relationship among heaven, earth, and man. But there is nothing fanciful about the fear they create among the people on whom they prey - the poorest of Hong Kong's 5.6 million people. Fear of Exported Gangs
Now, as Chinese stream from Hong Kong to avoid the Communist takeover in 1997, the countries accepting large numbers of these new settlers fear that Hong Kong is exporting its gangs.
''We're on the phone every day now with one police department or another wanting to know about triads,'' complained a senior Royal Hong Kong Police official. ''We don't believe there is a mass exodus of triad members from Hong Kong, but everybody out there is worried and nervous.'
Triads trace their roots back to 17th-century China, and although they call their leaders by traditional titles, such as White Paper Fan and Red Pole, they dominate many of the rough-and-tumble criminal businesses in modern Hong Kong.
Hong Kong's 15 or so active triad gangs have an estimated 20,000 members in the colony, where they have a virtual monopoly on extortion rackets, collecting payoffs from small newsstands and huge construction companies alike. Most Powerful Gangs
Their power has even attracted the attention of China's leaders. Four years ago, around the time Britain agreed to the 1997 transfer, the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, observed, ''Illegal gangs in Hong Kong are very powerful, perhaps much more powerful than their counterparts in any other place.'
The gangs can be crude and brutal. Last July a triad hit man wielding a meat cleaver hacked a Hong Kong businessman to death in a tennis court parking lot in front of stunned women and children. Days earlier, police said, the man had been sent the severed head of a black dog as a warning.
Last week, in what police believe was a revenge killing, a young Chinese hairdresser having a snack in a convenience store was attacked by seven triad gang members using barbecue forks and broken bottles. The police said when they arrived the forks were still imbedded in the victim's face and body.
Triads can also be sophisticated and businesslike: the police say white-collar enterprises sometimes insure their own safety by employing several triad members in their public-relations departments. Control of Bus Routes
Along with interests in loan sharking, illegal drug sales, pornography and prostitution, triads have virtually taken over the home-contracting business here and even control which buses are allowed to operate along some of Hong Kong's busiest streets, according to a report on the gangs.
It is not difficult to discern the triad touch in certain crimes, said Brian Merritt, chief staff officer of the police organized and serious crime group.
''If a restaurant owner won't pay up the first time he is asked,'' he said, ''the next day the triad will come back at his busiest hour, and 50 triad thugs will spread out and take up all his tables. If nightclubs don't pay, they like to toss live snakes on the dance floor.''
Triad gangs control many of the colony's popular martial arts schools, provide most of the bouncers for nightclubs and many of the extras in Hong Kong kung fu movies, the police said. 'Kung Fu Stars Are Straight'
''The big kung fu stars here are straight,'' said Mr. Merritt, ''but a lot of the extras are triad members. They are the ones who practice martial arts in big numbers.''
Dennis Collins, chief superintendent of the Royal Hong Kong Police, said triads work through a variety of methods, ''sometimes by establishing near-monopolies in legitimate businesses, other times setting up illegal gambling, loan sharking and the like.''
Some triads here, he said, have ''business relationships'' with some members of Chinese gangs, called tongs, in the United States.
''But there is a big difference,'' Mr. Collins said. ''A tong may or may not be infiltrated by triad thugs. It may or may not be engaged in illegal activity. But a triad is by nature a criminal organization.'' Triads in U.S. Since 1840's
Mr. Merritt said there have been triads in America ''since the 1840's, when large numbers of Chinese immigrants arrived. Some of the U.S. tongs are simply triad fronts.'' But the Hong Kong police have no estimate of how many triad members have left the territory.
It is a crime in Hong Kong to be a member of a triad or even to claim to be a member. To charge someone, the police need only uncover triad flags or banners in an apartment or office. Mr. Collins said a case can even be made if the police find triad poems - grandiloquent works about eternity, fidelity and brotherhood that begin with phrases such as, ''In the beginning of time an oath was sworn beneath the peach tree.''
Mr. Yan, the former triad member, said young people are sometimes coerced into joining by older triad members.
''But like many others I wanted to join,'' he said. ''You needed them because of all the fights and even to go to parties. Also, I wanted to find out all the secrets.''
After years of stealing, collecting protection money and selling drugs for his triad, he drifted away and later became a born-again Christian. Gangs in Canada, Britain
In Canada a major 1988 crime report put triads at the top of the list of the most dangerous organized crime groups in the country, along with the Mafia. In Britain, police reportedly are debating lowering height requirements in order to recruit more Chinese officers to combat growing triad crime, and in the United States the Federal Bureau of Investigation routinely consults Hong Kong on triad matters, the police said.
But Mr. Merritt and Mr. Collins deny that Hong Kong is exporting triads to other countries.
''Criminal activity in Hong Kong has been fairly stable for the past 10 years, and if triad gangs were relocating, surely we would see a drop in crime,'' Mr. Collins said. While conceding that some members may be going to other countries as legal or illegal emigrants, he insisted there is ''not this mass movement that has other countries so nervous.'' Fought Against Communists
In the modern struggle for control of China, triads fought the Communists as hired thugs of the Kuomintang, fleeing to Hong Kong or Taiwan when the Communists won, Mr. Collins said. That historic enmity has fueled the rumors that triads will leave Hong Kong before 1997, he added.
In the meantime, Hong Kong has begun yet another push to break the hold of triads here, distributing ''anti-triad'' information kits to schools, filling the streets with anti-triad posters and the air waves with anti-triad commercials.
The government has launched its own version of an anti-triad ceremony, a tribunal where the disaffected can go and secretly renounce their triad membership.
Fear of triads is so great that for several months the government reportedly could not find anyone willing to lease space for the tribunal's offices, and a spokesman said it now plans to locate the group in one of its own buildings.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Back to Top
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by MASTERforge
