AMNESTY WANTED

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8653, 11 February 1914, Page 7

AMNESTY WANTED

FOR PORTUGUESE PRISONERS. GOVERNMENT URGED TO ASSIST. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copy rlgh > (Times— Sydney "San” Special Cables.) LONDON, February 9. An influential meeting held at the Westminster Palace Hotel urged the Government to endeavour to secure a general amnesty for all Portuguese political prisoners. The Duchess of Bedford stated that numbers had been itnpiispned without trial or been shipped to the Azores. She could never forget the hands stretched through the prison doors, the imploring eyes, and the accents of despair she had heard from the prisons. [ln a recent letter to “The Times,” the Duchess of Bedford said : —After the proclamation of the Republic, it was hoped on all sides that the prin ciples of justice and freedom would bo 'adopted as the basis of the now Government; it is now repognised that this hope has proved to he a complete illusion. Espionage, treachery, illegal arrests, and detention without trial have become the established conditions under which the government is carried on, and by these means the prisons are filled with protesting Republicans no less than with suspected Royalists. The Carbonarios (an army of paid spies who now rule their masters) do their deadly work with a thoroughness which terrorises the entire population. All the hideous facts, including the miserable condition of the prisoners in the provinces as well as those in Lisbon, have now been fully placed before the English public. While recognising that some alleviations have been introduced as the result of indignant and continued protest, we claim that a general amnesty to political offenders (on the lines of the bill which before long will be again presented to the Portuguese Chamber by Don Jose d’Almeida), accompanied by a complete reversal of the prevailing system of tyranny, will alone serve to reconcile the British people to the continuance of the alliance with Portugal.]