BANDITRY TO-DAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21668, 11 June 1932, Page 17

BANDITRY TO-DAY

RAIDERS NUMBER MILLIONS. Banditry is going out of style in many parts of the world. In Italy Mussolini’s campaign against the Mafia practically wiped out that organisation last year when 122 members, brought into court in iron cages, were convicted, though it was difficult to get witnesses to testify against them. Enraged, the Mafia members hurled their' shoes through the bars at the sentencing judges, says the New York Times. In India the thugs, with whom the gentle art of strangling strangers with silk handkerchiefs was a, religious rite, have all departed for another world, leaving only their name behind them. Afghanistan has cleared up the northern part of the country of insurgents ,from the Soviet Central Asian republics who formerly used her mountains as a base for raids in their own country, and has now turned her attention to cleaning up the Khyber Pass.- Zog, the mountain chieftain who became King of Albania, is intent on wiping out the tribal enmities that made possible his rise to power. But if banditry is passing, it has by no means gone. Dispatches from China often tell of the depredations of bandit hordes in that country. Though first offenders arc punished by amputation of their hands and feet, and though the heads of captured constant offenders dangle‘from poles for all to see and con sider, no part of China is free from .brigands. Their number has been estimated at no less thaii 2,000,000. In the north-west of China banditry is a recognised profession. Boys are taught to ride swiftly, toi appraise a lonely traveller’s wealth at a glance, to rob, steal, and murder. In the southeast brigandage is immemorial. There cities are not exempt even from boys of school age who swoop down, sack the towns, murder some of the inhabitants, capture others for ransom, and then, as a rule, disappear. Tali, a large city in Yunnan, for four years was in the hands of the bandit chief Chang Chihah, who, though he was small and stuttered, had the strength of many men. In the cities of other provinces wealthy merchants dare not venture out of doors without a bodyguard lest they be kidnapped. The hostage is ordinarily treated well, and one kidnapping seems to build up immunity from further attacks. The police ordinarily- are powerless against the bandits. In fact since the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty attempts to check banditry have been so ineffectual that the gangs are increasing rather than decreasing. In recent years the Communist bandit has appeared. He scorns descent on a town for mere pillage. Instead, when he captures a city he stays there, destroying all official buildings and symbols of the old regime and setting up Soviets. The Communist bandits of China call themselves patriots. . So do many of the bandits in Mexico. Since the days when General Pershing' went in pursuit of Villa, the border brigands in curtainfringed sombreros are essential to any motion picture of the south-west. In reality they are now comparatively inactive. The native chieftains who descend on caravans crossing the Sahara and the Sudan are not altogether products of romantic imaginations. In Ethiopia there are many small bands of B 0 or 40 horsemen who will not attack foreigners—who shoot too straight—but arc ready to gallop out of their canyon hiding places when they spy camel trains driven by men of adjoining tribes, their lifelong enemies. These bandits arc called shiftas. But outside Timbuktu at the other side of Africa not even Europeans are safe. ,