SOVIET CENSURED FOR BARRING WIVES FROM HUSBANDS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22931, 27 April 1949, Page 7

SOVIET CENSURED FOR BARRING WIVES FROM HUSBANDS

(N.Z.P.A.—Reuter— Cony right.) (10 a.m.) NEW YORK, April 26. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt asked the United Nations' delegates yesterday to judge for themselves whether American housewives are exploited as “kitchen slaves” more than Russian women are.

She was replying in the General Assembly to Russian contentions that their women are freer of drudgery. The Assembly was debating a Chilean proposal to condemn Russia for refusing to let Soviet women accompany their foreign husbands abroad. The Assembly’s legal committee adopted a resolution in Paris embodying the Chilean proposal. The Chilean delegate, Senor Hernan Santa Gruz, accused Russia of flagrant violations of human rights. He said the Soviet Union had broken up nearly 1000 homes by refusing to let Russian women join their husbands. This was destroying friendly relations between nations.

Complaint “Too Ludicrous.”

The Polish delegate, Mr. Jan Drohojowski, declared that the Chilean complaint was too ludicrous to be discussed by the United Nations. Tire Soviet delegate, Mr. Semyon Tsarapkin, said that a number of Soviet wives who had been permitted to- join their husbands abroad had regretted it and had asked permission to return home.

He cited the cases of two women who had’ gone to Britain. One was the wife of “John Brand” who, in a letter to Pravda, had said her stay in London seemed “like imprisonment.” The other was the wife of “Thomas Clark, who was fairly well to do." She also complained of the treatment she received in Britain and said she was being watbhed all the time she was in London.

Mr. Hector McNeil, Britain, brought loud laughter when he said that apparently the only evidence Mrs. Clark could show that Britain was “barbarous and tyrannical” was that she was obliged continually to cook meals for her husband and sweep the floor.

Swept Floor and Cooked Lunch.

“I have been ordered to sweep the floor in my own home,” he said. “I have been known to cook Sunday lunch and I may tell you that I make a very excellent lunch —when I have the food,” said Mr. McNeil. As for Mrs. Brand’s description of her life in poverty in England, Mr. McNeil said that no doubt her conditions might compare favourably with those the very best Soviet working citizens were asked to accept. Mr. McNeil referred to two other cases where wives, refused permission to leave the Soviet, were driven almost to suicide. Another had been sent to prison for two years and another had vanished from her employment in the British Embassy and never been heard of again. Mr. McNeil concluded that nothing the Soviet could say would persuade the Assembly that their action was either "humane or moral.”

The legal committee’s resolution calling on the Assembly to declare the measures adopted by the Soviet contrary to the charter was approved by the Assembly by 39 votes to six.