PURGE IN CZECH ARMY

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25437, 8 March 1948, Page 7

PURGE IN CZECH ARMY

LOCAL COMMITTEES TOLD NOT TO ACT

COURTS FOR OFFENCES AGAINST REPUBLIC (Rec. 8 p.m.) PRAGUE, March •. The Central Action Committee of the Czechoslovak National Front has warned local action committees not to initiate local purges of army units. The Central Committee said that all cases where interference was necessary should be announced to the Defence Ministry and to the chairman of the Parliamentary Defence Committee, Mr Rudolf Slansky (secretary-gen-eral of the Czech Communist Party). The Ministry of the Interior has announced that a police officer imprisoned on suspicion of being an agent of the espionage network of the National Socialist Party hanged himself in his cell.

Reuter’s correspondent in Prague says that the Czech Cabinet has decided to set up court# in Prague, Brno, Bratislava, and Kosice to try people accused to serious offences against the Republic’s security. The Minister of Foreign Trade (Dr. Antonin Gregor) told foreign correspondents that there would be no changes in Czechoslovakia's foreign trade as a result of recent events. Most exports would continue to go to the West, although it was planned to raise exports to the East eventually to about 45 per cent, of the total. “Dr. Benes Kept Isolated'' Dr. Benes was kept completely isolated and was a prisoner rather than the head of the State, said Dr. Pavel Tigrid, formerly editor of the Czech Catholic People’s Party newspaper, “Lidova Democracie” in Prague, and Mr Edvard Haur, formerly a member of the party’s foreign policy commit*tee, who fled from Czechoslovakia and are now in Frankfurt.

German press reports say that- more than 600 Czech refugees have crossed the frontier into Bavaria since the crisis began in Prague. The Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party had issued a statement rejecting the British Labour Party’s statement condemning the new Czechoslovak Government The Czech party’s statement claims that the events of February were “a matter of suppressing an attempt by reaction from abroad to stop further progress towards Socialism.”

The statement adds: “You speak of an attack from without and treason from within. It is true that those factors existed here, but they were on the other side, and not as might appear from your statement. “The view that a minority has forced a dictatorship upon the nation does not conform with reality. The Government was a reconstruction according to Parliamentary usages and with the participation of Dr. Benes, who not only through his constitutional position but also through his moral authority and philosophic leadership personifies the democratic methods and basis of the Czechoslovak Republic.”