TYRANNY AND BRUTAUTY

Hawera Star, Volume L, 19 January 1931, Page 9

TYRANNY AND BRUTAUTY

LATE EDITION

POLISH ELECTION SIDELIGHTS ENGLISHWOMAN’S REVELATIONS IMMUNITY OF DEPUTIES. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegrapn Copyright.) Received 12.30 pan. to-day. LONDON, Jan. 17. Dr Marion Phillips, a member of the House of Commons, told a representative of the ‘ 1 'Sun-Herald cable seivice that the Polish elections were responsible for tyranny and brutality. She has just returned to London and says that some of the brutalities were suggestive of a primeval Orientalistami sadistic terrorism of the worst Russian type. There were hundreds of arrests on trumped-up charges. Dr Liebermann, an old member of the Socialistic Party, was thrust into prison and released after the elections without trial, with 15 gruesome wounds across his body. He was now a permanently broken man. Poland was in a seething ferment, for which the Pilsudski regime was responsible. “I asked them what was the need for such desperate action and they said that because the Deputies had immunity they committed crimes against Mhe penal code. We considered that the Polish politicians had to learn to be men with a sense of responsibility. “Officials were sent round the villages telling the peasants that if they voted against Pilsudski taxes would be doubled, while electors in some parts were told that if they did not show the officials what candidate they were voting for they would be regarded as voting against the Government. ‘Some booths were closed at midday because it was declared that 100 per cent, had already voted. Some voters were ordered to hide their voting papers and carried them in pipes, while others hid them in cartloads of hay. These arc merely examples of hundreds of abuses.”