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Crime Gangs Exercise Vast Power in Hong Kong
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 pricking 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.''
