Pole lakes Charges Of Forced Labour

Northern Advocate, 5 August 1949, Page 5

Pole lakes Charges Of Forced Labour

GENEVA, Thu. (11.30 a.m.)-Poland's representative, M. Julius Kalz-Suchy. today addressed the United Nations Economic and Social Council for 75 minutes on alleged "feudal forced labour conditions” under American, British and Belgian rule. He was speaking in the debate on forced labour, which made a dramatic start yesterday when Britain produced the official codex containing all the Soviet Government decrees on forced labour between 1933 and 1940. The British delegate (Mr Corley Smith) told the Council yesterday that his country estimated that Russia had more than 10,000,000 victims of slave labour. M. Katz-Suchy said today that in Tanganyika 39.000 people were under the compulsion of forced labour in 1945, and in Kenya and Uganda in 1943 the figure was 16,000. In Gambia, he claimed, 20,000 per cent of the population—had been under forced-labour compulsion. CAMPS 1 " K. Katz-Suchy referred to what he called “the turpentine camps of Florida.” He quoted the experience of an unnamed person who had gone to one of these camps, and found that “there were armed guards firing on anyone who tried to escape.” M. Katz-Suchy invited the American delegate (Mr Willard Thorp) to “tell us about the peonage system in his country.” He declared: “Destitute peasants are selling their children and many of them arc being brutally treated by their owners.” ‘INSTIGATION OF HATRED’ M. Katz-Suchy said the codex which Britain had produced as a ‘sensationally discovered document” could be bought at bookshops in Chancery Lane in London. He described the proposal being debated—for a world-wide “on the spot investigation” of forced labour—“as instigation of hatred and incitement to war propaganda.” “If there is not a survey on the spot we might as well not set up an investigating commission at all,” said M.. Fernand Dehouses, of Belgium.