What Historians Say of the Chinese Middle School Riots

I am not a historian so believe it best to give a summary of the 1956 Chinese Middle School Riots that provide the context for my post.

Before that, I must add that my purpose is not to write history but to provide through this blog a sense of the lived experience of a number of events as they occur in Singapore and Malaya. My intention is to focus on the "then" and not the "now" of Singapore and to try to get as close to the experiences of what it then was to a child and a young man growing up during that period. I really will have little to say of the present except when this lends itself as a contrast to past events.

So back to 1956. In that year Lim Yew Hock took over as the Chief Minister of Singapore from David Marshall and promptly moved against the various unions and organizations that were felt to be communist. Soon after taking office Lim Yew Hock deregistered and banned the Singapore Women's Association and the China Musical Gong Society arguing that these were communist front organizations. Early in October 1956, he also dissolved the Singapore Chinese Middle School Students' Union (the SCMSSU).

In response the students organized a sit in at Chung Cheng High School and the Chinese High School. When two weeks past with the students determined to carry on, the government issued an ultimatum on the 24 of October demanding the students disband and end their protests. Soon after demonstrations and riots broke out. On the 26 of October 1956, the students marched out of their school grounds intending to make their way to the Hokien Huay Kuan (the Hokien Clan association) in Telok Ayer Street to petition their grievances and force the issue.






The Hokien Huay Kuan was the association of the largest Chinese dialect group in Singapore. Its Chairman included Tan Kah Kee and Tan Lark Sye. In 1915 the association had registered its name as the Thian Hock Keng Hokkien Huay Kuan but in 1929 it was renamed Hokkien Huay Kuan.

The Hokkien Huay Kuan was housed at the Thian Hock Keng Temple in Telok Ayer street until 1919 when it moved to Hua Yi Xuan — one of the wings of the Temple. In 1955 the association moved to a new six-storey building across from the temple. This building has since been demolished and rebuilt as and in 2003 the building was as an eight-storey office complex.

However on that fateful day - the 26 of October 1956 - the students were determined to march to the Hokien Huay Kuan and present their protest petition to the committee. The police were equally determined not to allow them through and set up road blocks.



It was this march and demonstration that led to the shooting I witnessed. I was then a child and that shooting made a deep impression upon me. In particular I remembered how later that evening when all the noise had subsided and the street was quiet for the approaching night a monk from the house temple in front of which the boy had been shot came out with a pain and a brush valiantly attempting to clean away the blood.

That scene has always struck me as a parable for human folly and mortality. In a subsequent posting I would post some photographs of Amoy Street that even if taken recently would give a picture of where the boy was actually shot.