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press, the Governor of Hong Kong has accepted
a recommendation from his Review Board of leng
term sentences that the sentence of the
eleventh newsworker should be reduced from five
to three years.
He should thus be out with
full remission in the first week of October,
Thua all eleven news workers will be released
by the first week of October. If we accept
that the Chinese regard the eleven news workers
and Mr. Grey as equivalent we can be reasonably hopeful that Mr. Gray's ordeal should end about
the same time at the latest.
Tribute to Ur. Orey
5.
We have
I would like to say how deeply impressed
I have been at the strength of character which
Mr. Grey has shown under these appalling con-
ditions. Mr. Grey has in a sense been bearing
single-handed a large part of the burden of cafeguarding the wellbeing of the millions in Hong Kong for whom we are responsible.
been in the difficult situation of having to
ask him to make the sacrifice of his own
liberty for a very long period without being able to consult him or to explain to him the significance of his privations. But all this will have been wasted and to no purpose if his
release were secured in circumstances in which
the Chinese could claim effectively to the
people of Hong Kong that they had forced the
Hong Kong Government to do their bidding.
/Supplementary
CONFIDENTIAL