FRENCH CONVICTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21197, 1 December 1930, Page 9

FRENCH CONVICTS

LIFE ON DEVIL’S ISLAND. BARBAROUS TREATMENT. A SCATHING INDICTMENT.. (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) /t> • LONDON, November 29, (t (Received Aov. 30, at 5.5 p.m.) .■“ “ ie n a.me of humanity should this horror go on?” asks a writer in the uaily Express, consequent on the announcement that the cages on the French convict ship Lamartiniere are again being filled up with human cargo for transportation to Devil’s Island. “Such barbarism still lingers in France, despite the, abolition of public executions and its Claim that Paris is a city of light.” Ihe writer describes the boiling steam pipes which encircle the cages and are turned on in the event of unrest on board. The ships average quota is 600. Many have been carried ashore at the destination half dead from the hardships of the voyage. The writer estimates that an average of 30 a month are dying in hospitals on the island, or nearly 00 per cent, of the annual arrivals. “I have night ‘in the hospital in Devil’s Island with a convict holding his head m his hands and sobbing his heart out. Words cannot depict the awful horror of the place. There is a look in the eyes of the convicts which I cannot eradicate from my mind. Their very souls seem to start from their eyes, crying to humanity for mercy. I walked through with the governor, when the majority of the convicts' lowered their eyes. Here and there a convict bared liis teeth and snarled behind the governor’s back. Had he made any other move he would have been taken back to the cells for punishment or sent to work in the forests, bootless and Bockless. I have seen men who have fallen at work lying on the ground shaking from head to foot with fever, begging for aid which never comes. Even when they have finished their sentences they are unable to leave the island, because there is a tacit understanding with the civilian population that no ex-'convict is to be allowed to earn enough .money to take him back to France.” The writer concludes: “This is 1930 and still this monstrous thing goes on. The French are brave, chivalrous people. What is the explanation? They live in their own fair land, which is flowing with milk and honey, and they do not know what is happening in the colonies.”