PURGE IN CHINA

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28618, 21 June 1958, Page 13

PURGE IN CHINA

Mass Wave Of Arrests

• (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) BELGRADE, June 20. The official Jugoslav newspaper “Borba” said last night that a mass campaign of arrests and deportations was in progress in China. The campaign, which involved everybody—national minorities, the intellectuals, workers, the Army and Communist Party organisations—had been organised under the veil of a struggle against Right-wing elements, the newspaper said. An article signed by Vlado Teslic, the newspaper’s correspondent in China for several years, said a special psychosis of fear reigned all over the country. “Every citizen is obliged to criticise something or somebody and to suspect his neighbour,” he said. “Borba” said that at .a meeting of the Chinese security organs in Peking in February and March details had been given about “counter-revolutionary activities” in China.

More than 100.000 people were said to have been discovered as “counter-revolutionaries” in the last three years, while membership of “obscure political movements had been revealed at 1.770,000 people.” The short-lived political spring in China last year had now become “the cold Siberian tempest.” the newspaper said. This is the first time a Jugoslav newspaper has published such a strong criticism of interior conditions in a Communist country since Stalin’s death in 1953.