SYSTEMATIC TORTURE.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 28 January 1933, Page 5

SYSTEMATIC TORTURE.

POLES PERSECUTE UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS.

TALES OF MEDIEVAL TERROR FROM THE PRISONS. (By Telegraph-Press Assn -Copyright.) (Received This Day, 8.40 a.xn.) LONDON, Jan. 27. The Sun says that the Poles have organised systematic and deliberate oppression of Ukrainians, which the League Assembly is shortly expected to consider. It has become much worse in the last year. The persecution varies from petty obstruction and chicanery to barbarous inhumanities on prisoners, which the Western mind can hardly conceive, yet which are commonplaces in Polish Ukraine. Five lads under twenty years of age "were tried at Przemysl for belonging to a Nationalist organisation. They confessed after torture in which their hair was pulled out and they were not allowed to sleep for nights. The soles of their feet were beaten, which is one of the most common tortures in the prisons, the pain being excruciating. Another Ukrainian, named Kassak, suspected of complicity in the murder of a Polish politician, was tied to a bench face downwards, his feet wrapped in wet rags, and the soles of his feet beaten, which inflicts intolerable agony, but leaves no scar. Kassak was then turned over and beaten on the stomach. He was gagged, and water was poured into his nostrils until his stomach was distended and the sensations of drowning produced. Details of other tortures applied to peasants suspected of nationalism are unprintable. Even children have been arrested. There were over a hundred executions last year for political offences, of which many of the accused were innocent.