SOVIET PRISON HORRORS

Taranaki Daily News, 17 December 1930, Page 7

SOVIET PRISON HORRORS

ESCAPEES TELL THE STORY

DECLARATION IN COMMONS

INVESTIGATION PROMISED

PRISONERS DIE LIKE FLIES

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Rec. 7.30 p.m. London, Dec. 15. How three Russian prisoners, after enduring fearful hardships in Soviet timber camps, escaped by saving their meagre rations, leaving a small space among the timber they were loading on a steamer and crawling therein six days before sailing for Britain is related in a sworn declaration which Sir E. Hilton-Young, member of the House of Commons, has forwarded to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald with a request that the Government stop the trade which is stamped with the worst features of the servitude of labour. 1

The ex-prisoners are now Working in a British port. Their identity is not disclosed for fear of reprisals against their families, who are still in Russia.' They describe the appalling conditions of six timber camps, including the notorious Solovetsky Island, in/ which there are 130,600 prisoners, mostly political prison-ers-and better class farmers iyith a sprinkling of priests, all engaged in cutting and loading timber for 12 hours daily and seven days a week, clad in rags and supplied with famine rations of bread, fish and soup.

They suffer from hunger and thirst and disease is'rife. No doctors are available and prisoners die like , flies. If too weak to work they are flogged and put in a hole in the ground till they perish of cold. The filthy conditions of the over-crowded catpps are indescribable,, the ex-prisoners say. Escapees are shot down .mercilessly. Mr. MacDonald replied that he is having the matter investigated. '