Chinese Musician Feared Guards

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31344, 14 April 1967, Page 13

Chinese Musician Feared Guards

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright; NEW YORK, April 12.

One of China’s leading composers fled his homeland and came to the United States because he feared the Red Guards would imprison him with “devils and demons,” he told reporters in New York today.

He said he feared for his life at the hands of the Red Guards.

Ma Szu-tsung was holding a press conference in his Manhattan flat shortly after the State Department in Washington had announced he had been granted political asylum. Mr Ma, director of the Central Conservatory of Music in Peking, left China last December with his wife and two children.

The State Department spokesman described Ma Szutsung as one of China’s foremost musicians and composers.

i He now lives in New York with his brother. Ma Szuhung, a well-known concert pianist. Ma Szu-tsung, who was also vice-president of the Union of

Chinese Musicians, said he feared for his life because of the Red Guard cultural purge. “I cannot tell you how I escaped because it involves many people who were kind to me,” he said. “It was during the cultural revolution when everyone in my field was being persecuted. I was treated very badly and abused. I feared for my life and worse than that. “Last June more than 500 persons, including myself, which was nearly all of the personnel in the Ministry of Culture and the conservatoiy, were rounded up and kept in a sort of concentration camp to undergo thought reform,” Mr Ma said. “We were there for 50 days and I was accused of following a capitalist line of conduct. When I was turned out on August 9 with 18 others we returned to the conservatory.

“There, the revolutionary teachers and students smeared paste all over my body and pasted on pieces of paper that had abuse on them. “I was dragged to the front of the building where I was told to account for my offences by these teachers and students who became Red Guards. “I was called names and had to do hard labour every morning and in the afternoon and night had to prepare ’confessions.’

“I spent 103 days in a dreadful hide-out for devils and demons and underwent

what is too painful to describe.” Mr Ma made it clear that it had been the cultural revolution—which he called a “disastrous blow to culture”— which had caused his flight from China, United Press International reported. He said the Red Guard was burning all books “including Chinese classics and Western books.”

“All prominent persons in the culture field are considered reactionary. “There is no hope for persons like me. I must leave,” he said.