SOVIET’S PRISONERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 February 1927, Page 8

SOVIET’S PRISONERS

CAGED LIKE WILD BEASTS.

“The Times” correspondent at Riga, relating terrible experiences at the Soviet prisons, stated that an American, Aaron Copman, forty-eight, arrived destitute on the Latvian frontier. He declares that he travelled to Moscow in 1924 on behalf of American firms. The Soviet delayed completing his business until the autumn of 1925, when he was arrested. He was condemned to three years in concentration camps without trial for a “breach of the monopoly regulations.” He was herded with 137 others, mostly criminals, into a cage with wheels like those used for beasts in a menagerie. The cage was coupled to a train and sent to Siberia. Then the prisoners were; marched 100 miles knee-deep in snow. Many collapsed. Many prisoners attempted to escape, but were recaptured in the surround--ing forests or devoured by Wolves. Copman’s prison friend attempted to escape, but the guard shattered his knee with an explosive bullet. He was dragged back to camp and left to bleed to death. Ills companions were forbidden to render him assistance.

The guards, owing to the shortage of clothing, stripped his living body, and in tearing off Ilchenko’s boots, they literally tore of his wotinded leg. A woman who had stolen an insignificant sum, and who was serving a sentence, escaped. She returned, and the commander shot her With a revolver in sight of many other prisoners. Many others were wantonly shot on the smallest provocation.

Copman estimates that there are 10,000,000 prisoners in Russia and 150,000 in Moscow alone.