MOSCOW ALLEGES “PERSECUTION AND TERROR”

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 February 1949, Page 5

MOSCOW ALLEGES “PERSECUTION AND TERROR”

(Rec. '12.15 p.m.) LONDON, February 27

Declaring that more than 300,000 Soviet citizens -are still outside the motherland, Russia’s army newspaper, Red Star, alleged “persecution and terror” against them in displaced persons’ camps, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. The article followed an announcement that the Soviet Foreign Office had sent protest Notes to the British and American embassies against alleged obstacles to the return of Russians from Germanv and Austria. In Berlin, a British spokesman said: are holding no Soviet citizens' against their will in the British zone and the Soviet repatriation mission is operating quite freely there/’ Reuter says that according to the Moscow ’ radio the Soviet Foreign Minister (Mr Molotov). ha’s handed Notes to the United States and British Embassies in Moscow protesting about “obstacles put by the American and British authorities in the way of repatriation of Soviet citizens from the British and American zones of Germany and Austria.” The Associated Press says that Lieutenant-General Lukyanshenko, the Soviet Chief of Staff in Germany, alleged recently that the Americans were holding more than 100,000 Russians in Western Germany, American officials say that Soviet citizens still in Germany do not want to return to Russia. General Clay, the United States Military Governor in Germany, has asked the Soviet repatriation mission to leave the American zone of Germany.