Military Meeting On Growing Berlin Riots

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29907, 22 August 1962, Page 13

Military Meeting On Growing Berlin Riots

Preu Association— Copyright) BERLIN, August 21. The British, United States and French Commandants in West Berlin will meet the Mayor of West Berlin (Mr Willy Brandt) today to discuss the riots which have followed last week’s shooting of a refugee, 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who lay behind the Berlin wall for nearly an hour before he died. Yesterday’s riots raged up and down the wall until well past midnight and for the first time since they started last Saturday, they spread back from the border to the centre of West Berlin, the British United Press reported.

Today’s meeting will

consider a proposal by the West Berlin council that Western medical corps troops should go behind the wall into East Berlin

to aid refugees shot down by Communist police while trying to escape. But whether the East Germans or Russians would allow the troops to help refugees is considered questionable.

A Soviet bus. stoned by angry West Berliners last night, slipped across the border into East Berlin early today, Reuter reported. At least 12 West Berlin policemen and 15 demonstrators were hurt in last night’s incidents, which followed the stoning of the bus taking Russian guards to the Soviet war memorial in the British sector.

Some of the bus windows were broken and police said they were investigating reports that two of the Russians were hit.

Later, a car carrying Soviet officers was stoned as it entered the American sector at “Checkpoint Charlie ” The car was chased to the American McNair barracks, where the officers were given an escort to the Soviet war memorial. In clashes with the antiCommunist demonstrators, West Berlin police twice had to use water cannon. Several youths were detained. But unlike the previous night's rioting, when a United States military police vehicle was stoned, there was no anti-American demonstration yesterday

The demonstrators outwitted police who were ordered by Mr Brandt to crush demonstrations and border disorders. About 200 West Berlin police had cordoned off the area to prevent the crowd from stoning the bus on its daily run to the war mem-

orial. But a few hundred yards away, around the corner of Kochstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse, an equally big crowd, away from the cordon, had gathered in wait for the bus.

The bus was escorted by a police radio car and a truck with 30 West Berlin riot police in front, a police motor-cycle on each side and two radio cars and three lorries with 30 police in each, behind. Sudden Attack

But the Russian soldiers and their police escort were caught unawares by the sudden attack. As scores of stones smashed through the windows of the bus the soldiers ducked, placing their heads between their knees.

The police patrols were unable to stop the attack and one police car windshield was smashed.

Later in the evening a crowd cf 400 broke through mobile police barricades set up some distance from the wall near the spot where the refugee was shot and left to die last Friday. They hurled stones across the wall and at least two East German border police were hit and were seen with faces bleeding, the Associated Press reported. Then heated clashes between West Berliners and their own police broke out in various spots near the crossing point. About 250 West Berlin youths who taunted East German border guards touched off an East-West police tear-gas battle at Heinrich Heinestrasse. Communist police threw tear-gas grenades into West Berlin at the youth and West Berlin police retaliated with 50 tear-gas grenades, including 20 with concussion charges. Another crowd of 400 demonstrators in the crossing area tried to resist with a bombardment of stones when police used truncheons to stop them approaching the border. One demonstrator was injured and taken away in an ambulance. At another intersection, about 500 people attacked West Berlin police, who had to use truncheons and detained several young leaders. Some youths climbed lamp posts and turned off the gas lamps, putting the street into darkness.

Two policemen were injured as the crowd surged towards a double line of policemen barring the way to the border. The police made a truncheon charge and first reports said two youths bad been injured. The water cannon were moved forward and the crowd fell slowly back in face of the eight jets of water, throwing stones at the police as they went. "Rowdies" Blamed

As the waiter cannon were brought up, the Berlin city councillor for interior affairs. Senator Heinrich Albertz. told reporters: “We are not going to stand for rowdies discrediting the dignity of West Berlin.” Police later said that after the clash the demonstrators split into three columns. One column of about 800 people was dispersed at Moritzplatz by police using truncheons after the demonstrators attacked them with stones.

Seven policemen were injured in the scuffle, four seriously. They were taken to hospital. The other two columns—one of 2000 —were dispersed by police after baton charges Police said that 10.000 west Berliners took part in the riot, described as the most serious clash since the wall went up a year ago. the British United Press reported, but other news agencies varied the figure from 2000 to 5000. Police in three baton charges succeeded in pushing the demonstrators back more than two blocks from the crossing point. The West German Government said yesterday that it would do all in its power to end the “intolerable situation” at the Berlin wall and said it was considering

whether to bring the matter before the United Nations Human Rights Commission. The Government called on all Germans in east and west to take part in tracking down the killers of the refugee. It said anyone committing such crimes as servants of the East German regime would be brought to trial on charges of murder, inflicting injury, or deprivation of liberty. The West German Government was consulting international welfare organisations as well as the Western Allies on the problem of the wall.

The statement said the refugee’s death “underlines once again the tragedy of the division of Germany and it shows the inhumanity of the rulers in East Berlin.” “Not Crime”

Flight across the Berlin wall was not a crime in international law, the Government said. East Germans who wished to flee to West Berlin were entitled to the right of free movement anywhere within Germany. Moscow Radio said the Berlin tension was “now directly threatening serious conflict in the heart of Europe.” The home service broadcast asserted that West Berlin had been turned into a North Atlantic Treaty military base.

“Subversive acts are carried out against East German frontier installations. The territory of the republic is fired upon. “Gangs of thugs attack the servicemen guarding the frontiers of democratic

Berlin. It is clear that in these conditions West Berlin might be the detonator that sets off frightful destructive forces,” it said. The official East German news agency, A.D.N., said last night that the attacks by West Berliners on Soviet army buses were a “provocation the consequences of which can not yet be foreseen.”

“Vandals roam through West Berlin in organised gangs. They are allowed to terrorise the population, and throw stones, to wreck cars, to set off explosions and beat up those who hold other opinions,” it said.