PROTEST REJECTED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26584, 6 October 1947, Page 5

PROTEST REJECTED

EXECUTION OF BULGARIAN UNWARRANTED INTERFERENCE ALLEGED SOFIA, Oct. 3. The Government has sent a Note to Britain rejecting as a “ contradiction of all principles of- international law ” the British protest last week on the execution of Nikola Petkov. The Note declared that the Bulgarian Government could not recognise the right of any State to interfere in matters of Bulgarian law. It was not in the interest of understanding between the two countries that Britain should depict the Bulgarian Government as a dictatorship of a minority. The Note expressed regret and astonishment that Britain had chosen the moment of the signing of the peace treaty to attribute to the Bulgarian Government “monstrous aims and intentions.” In London the Foreign Office spokesman accused Bulgaria of “striking a grave blow at the sanctity of international law” in her reply to the British protest about the execution of Petkov. Thg spokesman declared the reply struck at the whole basis of international co-operation by suggesting Britain had no right to secure implementation of Article II of the Bulgarian peace treaty guaranteeing human rights. •

The British Note said that the trial of Petkov was a travesty of justice, and the circumstances “ confirmed the sinister impression that the Bulgarian Government was determined to extinguish the last vestiges of liberty in Bulgaria. Petkov, in the British Government’s opinion, died for the cause for which he always fought—the right of men to hold and express political convictions according to their personal consciences. Petkov’s execution was yet another example of the use* of judicial murder to get rid of people who did not agree with their Government, a procedure which was incompatible with democracy.