ITALIAN AFFAIRS WORSE’

Taranaki Daily News, 6 December 1929, Page 9

ITALIAN AFFAIRS WORSE’

REGIME LACKING SUPPORT

FASCISTS ALLEGED FAILURE

‘MOST SHOCKING TORTURES’

REFUGEE! VISITING LONDON

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, December 4. The general situation in Italy is going from bad to worse, declares Signor Rosselli, who escaped in September from imprisonment on a small island, and is at present visiting London. The best proof, he says, that the Fascist regime has not the country’s support is that Signor Mussolini cannot govern with the terrible exceptional laws passed in 1926. Signor Rosselli asserts that the prisons throughout Italy, especially in the south, are full of people whose only crime is that they are not in sympathy with the regime. They are subjected to the most shocking tortures, the latest being to tie the prisoner in a chair and strike him heavily and repeatedly over the heart with a rubber-covered hammer.

Reprisals against the families of antiFascists have now become part of Italy’s legal system. Thousands of Italian homes have been ransacked and the furniture destroyed in front of helpless women.