FRENCH ATROCITIES

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 149, 21 December 1945, Page 7

FRENCH ATROCITIES

ALLEGATIONS IN INDO-CHINA

SAIGON, December 20. A French war correspondent has protested to General Leclerc, commander of the French forces, against the tor? ture and killing of a Tonkinese member of the insurgent Annamese forces. The correspondent says he saw the Tonkinese nearly beaten to death by a French lieutenant and by a civilian interpreter for his refusal to answer questions. The Tonkinese, says the correspondent, was then shot by a French sergeant in the presence of French officers.

The correspondent says that the execution of captured Annamese soldiers who refuse to talk is quite an ordinary feature of any French clean-up operation anywhere in southern Indo-China. A French armoured patrol searching for Annamese leaders found an improvised Annamese field ambulance with 16 wounded, all of whom were killed. The leader of the patrol said that the Annamese were half-dead, anyhow. The correspondent says that official figures which he obtained from reliable French eye-witnesses indicate that the French reconquest of Indo-China involves systematic mass slaughter of insurgents. Only a few days ago at French police headquarters in Cholon (Saigon's Chinatown) 11 Annamese insurgents were shot without trial and 40 other prisoners were compelled to witness the executions.