SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS

Evening Star, Issue 25672, 21 December 1945, Page 5

SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS

FRENCH RECONQUEST OF INDOCHINA ANNAMESE SHOT WITHOUT TRIAL SAIGON, December 20. A French war correspondent has protested to General leClerc, commander of the French forces, against the torture 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. Tho correspondent says the execution of captured Annamese soldiers who refuse to talk is quite an ordinary feature of any French clean-up operation anywhere in Southern Judo-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: “The Annamese were half-dead anyhow.” The correspondent says 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 Cliolon (Saigon’s Chinatown), 11 Annamese insurgents were shot without trial and 40 other prisoners were compelled to witness the execution.