RED GUARDS SHOUT AT EXPELLED NUNS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31153, 1 September 1966, Page 15

RED GUARDS SHOUT AT EXPELLED NUNS

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright)

HONG KONG, August 31.

Two of eight European Roman Catholic nuns expelled from China fainted while crossing into Hong Kong today as about 700 Red Guards shouted and raised clenched fists at them.

The young Red Guards on the Chinese side shouted as an 85year old nun from Cork, Ireland, Mary O’Sullivan, was wheeled across the border on a baggage trolley. The nun, known as Sister Eamonn, had apparently fainted from exhaustion. She is the sister of an Australian nun, the Rev. Mother Edna Fergus. The other nun who fainted

was Sister Winifred Duff, a 76-year-old Canadian, the mother superior of the Peking convent taken over by the Red Guards last week. Hong Kong’s police superintendent, also named O’Sullivan and also from Cork, carried Sister lamonn to the waiting room of the Lowu border railway station. Stretchers were hastily improvised and the two nuns were taken by ambulance to Kowloon Hospital. The nuns all appeared drawn and depressed. They said they had been under armed guard during the whole three-day train journey from Peking to Can-

ton and had not slept for eight days. The nuns, who were too tired to be interviewed by reporters, said the Red Guards who occupied their convent forced them to stand against a wall and bow their heads for 30 minutes. A 61-year-old French nun walked across the border with the aid of a crutch. Hong Kong newspapers reported today that Red Guards claimed to have found six European Roman Catholic priests hiding in the “Shek Shud” (stone house) church in Canton. The papers quoted arrivals from Canton as saying they had been told that the six men had secreted themselves there for some years.