SLAVERY IN LIBERIA

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 23 May 1932, Page 5

SLAVERY IN LIBERIA

SUGGESTIONS FOR REFORM REPORT BEFORE LEAGUE ACCEPTANCE' NOT CERTAIN. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 20. The League Council lias considered the Liberian slavery question. lbe report of the commission providing lor the appointment by the League and the United States of high officials to supervise administrative, financial and sanitary reforms was adopted, although* the Liberian Secretary of State said he was not in a position to say if his Government would accept the measures. A loan of 147,000 dollars, as well as a moratorium, will not be negotiated until Liberia accepts tlie full plan or reorganisation contained in the report. In a recent debate in the House of Lords on slavery and enforced labour in Liberia, Lord Snowden said the British Government, in co-operation with the United States Government, had decided to withhold recognition from the black republic until it had given satisfactory evidence of a desire to act upon the recommendations ol the League Commission. Reports,, he said, confirmed the fear that so far there had been no improvement, and that the visits of the Commission had been followed by a recrudescence of cruelty and repression against the aboriginal natives, a retaliation, it was suspected, for the complaints they bad made. Representations bad been made by the Governments of Great Britain, America and France, but the reply had been far from satisfactory. The killing and burning alive of men, women and children, and tlm firing of forty-four villages were among charges made against the Liberian authorities and admitted by the Liberian delegation to the League, which asserted that the measures were necessary to maintain order.