COMMUNISM AND JUSTICE

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26151, 29 June 1950, Page 5

COMMUNISM AND JUSTICE

COMMENT BY MR TRUMAN

SANCTITY OF RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, June 27. Mr Truman to-day described Soviet Communism as “a world-wide attack on the ideas of justice.’’ His criticism came after he had ordered United States air and naval support for South Korea.

Mr Truman said: “Wherever nations or peoples have been overcome by totalitarianism, the practice of justice has been snuffed out but the ideal remains deep in the heart of men. “They will always long for protection against the midnight arrest, the slave camp, the torture chamber. Men will never accept these things as right.”

Mr Truman said that totalitarian movements had made a mockery of the forms of justice.

“Their judges are prosecutors, their prosecutors are hangmen, their defence attorneys are puppets,” Mr Truman said.

American justice was based on individual rights. “This concept has always been a threat to absolutism and tyranny. To-day in a world where absolute power is again on the march this concept is a challenge to new forms of tyranny. Men feel more deeply than ever that all human beings have rights and that it is the duty of the Government to protect them.”