The May 24 incident (Chinese: 五二四事件), also called the Liu Ziran incident (劉自然事件) and the Reynolds riot, was a 1957 international incident between the United States and Taiwan (ROC) that started over the killing of an ROC national by an American military officer and the subsequent acquitted court-martial conducted by U.S. military personnel in Taiwan, resulting in protests that culminated in separate mob attacks on the then-U.S. Embassy, the United States Information Service buildings and a police station in Taipei.[1][2]
There were other acts of protests prior to, during and after May 24, 1957, across Taiwan and in Taipei that led U.S. government officials behind-the-scenes to refer to these events as "riots" but U.S. officials deliberately spoke of a "riot" to avoid any adverse psychological impact on its alliance with the ROC. Similarly, the May 24 incident was seen then and later as an "anti-American" protest, although Chiang Kai-shek, president of the ROC, publicly referred to the events of May 24 as an "unfortunate incident" (不幸事變).[3]
- ^ Kerr, George H. (1992) [1965]. Formosa Betrayed (2nd ed.). Boston: Taiwan Publishing. pp. 410–3. OL 5948105M.
- ^ Yeh, Chiou-Ling (2021). "Anti-American Expressions: The 1957 Taipei Incident and Chinese in the Philippines, Thailand, and Hong Kong". The Journal of American-East Asian Relations. 28 (4): 325–355. doi:10.1163/18765610-28040002. ISSN 1058-3947. S2CID 245448336.
- ^ Stephen G. Craft, American Justice in Taiwan, The 1957 Riots and Cold War Foreign Policy. (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2016), p. 142.