THE BELGIAN RIOTS.

Feilding Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 1410, 15 April 1902, Page 2

THE BELGIAN RIOTS.

> Severe Fighting in Brussels. Felepraph Press Association Copyright Brussells, April 14. The situation in Belgium is very serious, though the Government are confident they will be able to quell the disturbances. After the open rupture in the Chamber of Deputies, between the Clerical and Socialist members, the Government arrested Yandenevelde, the chief Socialist leader, though he was subsequently released. His followers were incensed, and street fighting in the evening was severe, the mobs using revolvers, iron bolts, and glass bombs filled with corrosives. The gendarmes used their swords and rifles, and 100 were wounded, and at least three killed. There was a ghastly struggle for the body of a fatally wounded man, whose clothes were stripped off before the gendarmes were successful in their efforts to secure the latter.

The rioters made determined and fruitless efforts to secure the corpses of two rioters from St. Pierrie Hospital, the object being to exhibit them and to inflame the populace. The troops threatened to fire on anyone opening windows. Women were wounded in the disturbance. A rising also occurred at Liege and Lalonviers. Twenty thousand socialists and 3000 Liberials quietly demonstrated at Gharlerloi on Sunday in favour of universal suffrage. King Leopold is at Ostend. The Socialist leaders have publishep a violent appeal to the people to take universal suffrage by storm if Parliament denies it.