TNAG-0110-FCO40-146-Detainees-and-prisoners-following-19671968-disturbances-1968 — Page 38

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"d'Affaires in Peking, told a press conference that the treatment of the detained Britons contravened 'international standards. of behaviour', and that the Chinese treatment of Reuter's correspondent Anthony Grey was a scandalous thing' as he had not been sentenced in any court or accused of any crime.'

"Cradock talked as if he really did not know why Grey had been detained and what had happened in Hongkong since May last year.

"Here in Hongkong not one, but more than twenty journalists, along with thousands of Chinese patriots, have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from a few weeks to five years. Some 500, including 14 journalists, are now still in prison, Of course these journalists were charged and sentenced in court. But the charges and the evidence were so flimsy that if the Chinese legal system had been as hypocritical as its British counterpart in Hongkong, Grey could have been convicted of any crime the Chinese might have wished.

"Take our reporter Huang Tse for example. He was arrested and dragged into a public lavatory where he was viciously beaten up until he was seriously wounded and then taken to a police station. At the time of his arrest, he was doing nothing other than taking press photographs of a demonstration then staged in Central District. But brought to court when he was still in bandage, he was framed up with various trumped-up charges and sentenced to five years on the sole strength of the verbal evidence given by the policeman who had beaten him up and a paper knife which they had planted on him.

"Here in Hongkong not one but more than fifty Chinese patriots have been detained in a concentration camp without having been, to use Cradock's words, 'sentenced in any court or accused of any crime.'

"Whether in prison or in the concentration camp, the Chinese patriots have been subjected to malnutrition and exposure, When they shivered in the cold, they were not allowed even to accept warm jackets sent to them by their compatriots in Canton. They were beaten up from time to time by prisoners instigated by the warders or by the warders themselves. Hundreds of them were put under solitary confinement for as long as seven months.

"As if all this was not scandalous enough, the Hongkong British police murdered nearly thirty Chinese compatri- ots in cold blood, some in the streets, some in police custody and at least one in the basement underneath the courtroom where he was to be tried.

"Let Cradock tell us if all this was strictly within the code of 'normal standards of behaviour'.

"After Cradock, the China Mail clamoured for the release of Grey and the other Britons now detained in China. Let us tell the China Mail that what is really important now is not the release of the British in China, but the immediate release of all the Chinese patriots now still imprisoned or detained in the concentration camp."