Editor's note
In Memoriam of the Wild Days
I had the luck to see 14K triad leader Wan Kuok-Koi, aka “Broken Tooth”, being sentenced back in November 23, 1999 to 15 years in jail for criminal association, loan-sharking and illegal gambling. I say luck, because it was a moment in history, at least Macau’s history. After hearing the sentence, Wan, in his flashy pinstriped suit (an odd choice for a court session) hopped on his chair and shouted abuse at Judge Fernando Estrela, accusing the local police of corruption at the same time.
The dragonhead, who had told TIME magazine the previous year that “it is better to die than be defeated”, had betrayed (involuntarily) his own belief, and had therefore lost his poise as a glamorous gang boss, once celebrated in a Hong Kong movie-bio called Casino. The end of the nineties in Macau would be marked by his flamboyant looks and threats, and the war between triads and later between triads and police, which would cost the lives of 37, and create
sensational (and often untrue) headlines around the world.It was a time of excess, with the then Security Secretary, Manuel Monge, praising the high professionalism of his sharp shooters “who wouldn’t miss the target” in an effort to calm down the population, after a killing in broad daylight in the heart of Macau. Putting aside the political recklessness of the statement (he recently said that he would repeat the comment!), history would actually prove him right - no ordinary citizens were hit by stray bullets. But officials dealing with triads and gambling were, such as Manuel Antonio Apolinário, then a Lieutenant-Colonel and deputy director of Macau’s gambling inspectorate. He was shot twice at point-blank range in the face and neck andÖsurvived. Now, more then a decade after those dark days of September 1996, Major-General Apolinário breaks his silence and tells Closer that he is a man who has lost all faith in justice. And who can blame him? Not only has there not been a single arrest connected with his attempted murder, but he also discovered at the end of 2007, and after much insistence, that his case was filed in 1998, while the
territory was still under Portuguese rule. Apolinárioís job was of course risky by nature, especially in a place where police authorities and gangsters knew each other personally, and officersí bravado resulted in shootings and bomb blasts (like the case of Judiciary Police Chief Marques Baptista) as a response.
But it seems to me that Apolinárioís case is also one of justice sacrificed in the name of realpolitik: On the one hand, the Portuguese Administration were trying (unsuccessfully) to avoid bloody stains in the final period of its rule, and on the other China was conveniently allowing a bit of a chaos to taint the Portuguese efficiency and promote its ìtoughness with resultsî image ahead of the 1999 handover. Amidst all these interests, Apolinário was inconvenient for all sides. He didn’t fall by the bullets, but he was let down by the circumstances.
In 2008, the triad warfare sounds like a tale from a distant past, but itís important to remember who its main players were to avoid repeating the same mistakes.