WORLD-WIDE INQUIRY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27025, 9 March 1949, Page 5

WORLD-WIDE INQUIRY

CONDITIONS IN LABOUR CAMPS UNITED NATIONS APPROVAL N ZPA—Copy right NEW YORK, Mar. 7. The United Nations approved to-day the American request for a worldwide inquiry into slave labour. The proposal was submitted to the Economic and Social Council after the American Federation of .Labour had charged that millions of Russians were suffering inhuman treatment in labour camps. The United States resolution did not mention Russia by name, but called on the International Labour Organisation to include all charges in its investigation. The vote on the inquiry was 14 to 3, with Russia, White Russia and Poland voting against it. • The Russian delegates left no doubt during the long debate on the issue that the Soviet would rebuff any United Nations efforts to investigate conditions behind the iron curtain. They contended tb’t the inouiry was a United States scheme to get American intelligence agents into Russia. Poland denied that any slave labour existed in the Soviet Union, and the Polish delegate contended that the only real slave labour in the world was in the capitalist countries. Russia charged that American ■.. orkers were enslaved by the Taft-Hartley Law.