TERRIBLE CRUELTY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 52, 28 January 1933, Page 7

TERRIBLE CRUELTY

PRACTISED BY POLES. OPPRESSION OP UKRANIANS. BARBAROUS INHUMANITIES. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received January 28, 8:40 a.m. LONDON, Jan. 27. - The Sun says that the Poles have organised systematic and deliberate oppression of the Ukranians which the League Assembly is shortly expected to consider. It became much worse last year. The persecution varies from petty obstruction and chicanery to barbarous inhumanities on prisoners which the western mind can hardly conceive, yet are commonplace in Polish Ukraine. Five lads under 20 years were tried at Przemysl for belonging to a nationalist organisation. They confessed after torture in which their hair was pulled out. They were not allowed to sleep for nights, and the soles of their feet were beaten, which is one of the most common tortures in the prisons, the pain being excruciating. Another Ukranian named Kassak, suspected of complicity in the murder of a Polish politician, was tied to a bench face downwards. His feet were wrapped in wet rags and the soles beaten, which inflicts intolerable agony and leaves no scar. Kassak was then turned over, beaten on the stomach, gagged and water poured into, his nostrils until his stomach was distended, tlie sensations of drowning being produced. The details of other tortures applied to peasants suspected of nationalism are unprintable. Even children are arrested. There were over 100 executions last year for political offences whereof many of the victims were innocent.