Amidst the mob violence, regional police and the Imperial Army used the pretext of civil unrest to liquidate political dissidents. Socialists such as (平澤計七) and the Chinese communal leader Wang Xitian (王希天), were abducted and killed by local police and Imperial Army, who claimed the radicals intended to use the crisis as an opportunity to overthrow the Japanese government.Mikiso Hane, Reflections on the Way to the Gallows: Rebel Women in Prewar Japan, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988, p.176 (Hane references the memoirs of Japanese socialist Tanno Setsu)
