Red Guards Hanged Grey’s Cat

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32119, 15 October 1969, Page 15

Red Guards Hanged Grey’s Cat

(N Z PA-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, Oct. 14. Back home in Britain after 26 months house detention in Peking, the Reuters news agency correspondent, Anthony Grey, said yesterday that one terrible moment during his ordeal was when the Red Guards hanged his cat before his eyes.

Mr Grey, who is 31, talked about the night of August 18, 1967, when at least 200 Red Guards swarmed into his bouse in Peking, about one month after his detention.

“They burst into my office and dragged me downstairs to the courtyard. It was a hot night, and I was in shorts and a sweat shirt. They painted me with black paint and “jet-planed” me—forced my arms behind me so that my body was bent forward. Whenever I tried to straighten up, one Red Guard at my sidp punched me in the stomach. Then they glued a poster to my back.”

“Others went in the house, and I could hear the breaking of glass and other sounds of wrecking. They kept screaming that I was an imperialist, reactionary journalist

“In my painful position I sweated so much that a pool formed on the ground under my eyes and I could see my reflection in it.

“Suddenly, there was a silence and a slight round of applause. I was told to straighten up—and this was perhaps the worst moment of my two years. A few inches in front of my eyes dangled the body of my cat, Ming Ming, hanged from the roof by a washing line.

“He was a nice little brown and white cat, very friendly. He had become a very good companion to me in the first month of solitude. ‘The crowd then started to shout ’Hang Grey, Hang

Grey,’ sometimes changing this to ‘Hang Wilson’ (Mr Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister).” Mr Grey said that when he was frog-marched into the house again, he found posters everywhere and black paint daubed even on his sheets. The first month of his imprisonment had been fairly easy: he had the freedom of his entire house, and was allowed to write and play chess with a friend by telephone. But from the time of the Red Guard invasion, he was confined to one small room, eight feet by eight feet, which had been used by his driver between duties. It contained only a bed with the springs sticking up. ‘This was to be my home for the next three months,” Mr Grey said. “I could walk only eight and a half paces to a small washroom. They had nailed boards across the window, and even daubed the bristles of my toothbrush with black paint”s

Mr Grey said that he had three books. One was about chess, another on the theory and practice of communism, and the third a book describing yoga exercises that he had picked up by chance on his way to China. ‘The yoga book turned out to be my salvation,” he said. “In my confined space I did the exercises for two hours each day and found that not only did they keep me in physical health, but they also brought me mental calm at times when I felt close to panic.”

His food was sparse: black coffee and some scrambled egg for breakfast, meat once a day, in the evening. There was no butter or any fruit. After a month, his guards allowed the window to be open for one hour a day. Later in the year he developed stomach trouble. “1 could not walk even my eight and a half paces,” he said. “I felt this very keenly.” His diet suddenly improved after a Chinese doctor had examined him. There was butter at last, and fruit, and he was moved into a larger !

room, 12 feet by 12 feet The floor was bare and there was a blackboard, propped at eye level and filled with the quotations of Mao Tse-tung. From then until his release, he said, his life consisted of devising ways to occupy his mind and keep it balanced.

His guards never spoke to him, only stared at him with hostile eyes. He thought of nicknames for them, and composed insulting rhymes about them in his mind to the tune of popular songs.

They, in their turn, sang revolutionary songs incessantly or chanted slogans. “I thought of my past life, of course,” Mr Grey said. “I though of incidents, people and actions I had taken, and analysed them all, right back to my childhood. “I felt after a while that I had scraped my memory clean. « “I refused to pass the time away by sleeping in the day time. I knew that would be bad for me, that I had to maintain a proper rhythm of sleep so that I would not be awake in the long nights. “So, even on the hottest days, I sat bolt upright in a chair, keeping awake when even the guards were sleeping. “Then I tried to make a proper system of what life I had. I would draw up plans for the coming month—little things, because that was all I had. such as noting that on such-and-such a day Iwould ask for access to my books upstairs to be restored to me.”

Mr Grey said that the letters he occasionally received from his mother and his fiancee, Miss Shirley McGuinn, were high spots. “One letter would occupy me for a whole day,” he said. “I would read it over and over again.” In spite of his ordeal Mr Gray was remarkably relaxed yesterday when he spoke quietly and unemotionally about his experiences, often laughing and making a joke. “On Christmas Day, 1968,” he said, “I received a crossword puzzle and looked upon lit as a fine present. Somehow

I felt a quiet sort of joy on that day. I put on my best suit, to the puzzlement of my guards, and I tried to make it a special day, though I was so alone.”

At the end of May of this year, Mr Grey suddenly found that his conditions miich improved: he was allowed to listen to the radio, and this was his first contact with the outside world. It was also the dawn of hope that, at last, freedom was near.

The British Government is considering ways to show its admiration for Mr Grey’s courage during his 26 months in detention.

Mr Maurice Foley, Undersecretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, told Parliament yesterday: “It is cause for the deepest satisfaction that Mr Grey’s long and unjustified detention by the Chinese authorities has ended.”

Replying to a member’s question whether Mr Grey would be compensated by the Government for his ordeal, Mr Foley added: “I appreciate your suggestion that we should pay tribute to the fortitude and courage of Mr Grey. I shall be considering in what way we can most appropriately show our admiration.”