U.N. Commissioner Recommended

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30558, 29 September 1964, Page 17

U.N. Commissioner Recommended

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) CANTERBURY (England), September 28. The world’s governments yesterday were urged by Amnesty International—a nonpolitical movement for freedom of opinion and religion—not to carry out death sentences for political offences until six months after sentence, or until an appeal to a higher court has been heard.

At their conference in Canterbury, they adopted a resolution calling on the United Nations to appoint a commissioner of human rights throughout the world.

The conference also pressed for the rapid conclusion of an international conven-

tion whereby the imposition of the 'death penalty for political offences should be abolished. The conference also decided not to include prisoners who had actually used or advocated violence for the furtherance of their objectives. Mr Antony Lester, a London lawyer, said that after 10 weeks in the southern states of America he had returned to England with a dossier of 200 affidavits of poiice brutality towards Negroes and civil rights workers. He said: “In the state of Mississippi it was worse than I had dreamed.

“I was shocked by what I saw. It is only by the action of the Federal Government that we don’t have a South African situation there.”

Crete Museum.—The Greek Government plans to spend £7O million in Crete, including a museum of the 1941 Battle of Crete, to attract tourists.—Athens, September 28. i