Soviet Trials

Grey River Argus, 12 April 1928, Page 5

Soviet Trials

CIVIL FOLICE BROUGHT TO BOOK LONDON, April 10. The “Times’s” Riga correspondent reports that the supreme tribunal of thti Ukraine has begun the trial vf six of the highest police officials and a number of the rank and file in th* town of Chuguieff, in the Donetz region, for alleged torturing of prise ners by slow strangulation and pu - ling out their hair, in which the poJict chief personally participated. It is also alleged that They terror ised Chuguieff’s population of 13,000 instead of protecting them. IN JAPAN. REPRESSIVE ACTIVITY. TOKIO, April 10. The police have removed the ban on the publication of the Communist raids of March 15 in which upwards of seven hundred alleged Radicals were detained. Simultaneously, the Home Ministry has announced the dissolution of thn e Left Wing organisations, the Ronoto, or Japan Farmer-Labour Party, headed by Ijou Oyama M.P., the Nihon Rodokiai Hyogikai or Japan Labour Council, ‘and the Nihon Musanseineo Domes or Proletarian Youths’ League. The Premier visited the Emueror to dav, presumably to report on the same matter.

It is revealed that the police acted as the result of the evidence of Com munist activity at the general election in February, when propagandists preached the revolutionizing of Japan and the adopting of the farmers and workers’ dictatorship. The Communist organisation perfected on December 4, 1926, before the death of Emperor Taisho; also a Japanese branch of the Red Trade Union Internationale was formed in Septmenber, 1927. It is understood that those arrested include a considerable number of students and University graduatesThe Red Trade Union organisation iweluded four hundred members, who were acting as organisers in 36 pro vinees. t Well-informed sources consider tha the whole Communist seer* is not in the least an indication that the stabil ity of the Japanese State is endanger

The police revelations failed to in dicate any evidence of official Rus sian support for the .Tnpsiiese Comimmist activities, ami it is stated that no strain on Russo-Japanese relations is expected.