TERROR IN SWATOW.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 45, 21 January 1928, Page 6

TERROR IN SWATOW.

RED ORGY OF KILLING

MASSACRE OF 10,000 PEOPLE

SHANGHAI, Jan. 12. Ten thousand persons, mostly landowners and capitalists,- have been put to death in a savage Red massacre in the Swatow district of China, 200 miles northeast of Canton, in the last two months. The massacre was a fiendish orgy of killing, carried on in public and was marked by almost indescribable brutalities. Each village has been ordered to supply a quota of heads every week, under pain of the severest penalties. In spite of the utmost precautions on tho part of the Communists in the environs of Swatow, the news of a two months’ terror has eventually crept out.

The news shows that in two months no fewer than ten thousand people met their deaths in the most appalling conditions. It was not merely a, massacre, but a massacre with a fiendish delight in its cruelty, and the butchers gloated on the agonies of their victims. Figures for the individual towns range as high as 600 and 700.

Some fortunate ones were shot outright. Other unhappy people were subjected to the notorious Chinese slicing process before crowds of thousands who were forced to attend and compelled to applaud the executioners. The slightest indication of disgust was sufficient to bring the demonstrator to the executioner’s knife. The victims were chielly landowners and capitalists whose property has been confiscated. They were hailed in public places where the Reds harangued from rostra, decorated with the heads of the victims which had been cut off during the process of the meeting. A series of serious disturbances on the Manchurian side of tho Korean border is perturbing the Japanese authorities in Korea who are being urged by Japanese subjects in Manchuria to despatch troops to prevent looting and massacres.

An organisation of Chinese peasants known as the “Big Sword Society,” who are practically bandits, has been raiding the larger towns, culminating in the sack of the border town, Lin Kiang, on Monday. To-day’s despatches warn the authorities that an uprising is planned for Tuesday night. The hungry residents in towns at Chinchow, near the South Manchurian railway and Nan Ivwang, where tho people are at starvation point, due to the recent doubling of food prices, due in turn to the collapse of the Mukden currency, are in a state of revolt. Japanese residents are urging the Governor of Korea to take immediate steps as the majority of the people along the border are Korean subjects of Japan. There are many unconfirmed reports that Soviet agents of the Christian general, Feng-Yu-hsiang, are instigating the uprisings in order to embarrass . Marshal Chang Tso-lin, the Mukden War Lord.