“OGPU” IN PARIS

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 May 1930, Page 12

“OGPU” IN PARIS

TORTURE FOR NON-STRIKERS.

PARIS, March 15. The disciples of Moscow in Paris have evidently decided to establish here an Ogpu of their own, in which Justice is as much a parody, and its execution as swift and brutal, as in the Soviet “Eden.”

There is at present a type of Communist employed on municipal lighting works. Two Belgians, despite the strike order issued by the Communist “cell,” were found at work painting lamp standards. Refusing to listen to the appeals of the Communist strikers, who demanded that they “down tools,” they were surrounded by a dozen. Bolshevists, who escorted them as prisoners to the offices occupied by the local Strike Committee. Here they were led into a “Court,” consisting of fifteen Communists, who, having heard the charge against the unhappy men, sentenced them to pass an hour in “Room 36,” which is another name for the torture chamber. Following this parody of a courtmartial, the two men were hustled into a cellar in which they were beaten and kicked by a dozen tormentors, who did their work so thoroughly that late in the night they had to deposit the two unconscious victims on the pavement, where they were picked up later by the police and taken to hospital. Four of the amateur judges have been arrested, and the police are still actively investigating this “cell,” which has dared to set up, in a civilised capital city , an imitation of what, in Soviet Russia, masquerades as “justice.”