Police outside building with acetylene torches; truck; tear gas rifle; police out with arrested people; interior building and hooks; roof of Bank of China; barbed wire.




Initials RGH/VS/CR/OS



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Background: Hong Kong police continue their raids on suspected Communists strongholds and the Government today (Thursday) announced emergency regulations, including a ban on false reports or statements. In one raid on Tuesday night, police hit a building in the nightclub district of Hong Kong Island.

A company of police stormed one door of the multi-storey building barely two miles (3 kms) from the Central District.

A government spokesman said the raid was directed against office of the Chinese Reform Association on the ninth floor. The association's chief organiser was arrested earlier at his home.

Police first secured the lift shaft and two staircases in the block, floors immediately above and below the ninth, then moved in.

They found five men inside the offices and took them away for questioning with two men arrested when the raid started.

Inside the offices fitted out as a social club, police found the walls adorned with Communist slogans and a portrait of Mao Tse-Tung and an array of sharpened iron piping, hooks dummy wooden rifles and home-made gas-masks.

Meanwhile, the roof of the Bank of China in the Central District has been sealed with barbed wire aimed at preventing police and army helicopters from landing. The bank, the Chinese People's Republic's main inlet of foreign exchange, is said to be heavily-stocked with food and fuel supplies.