VIOLENT CUBAN RIOTING

Taranaki Daily News, 19 December 1933, Page 5

VIOLENT CUBAN RIOTING

ATTACK UPON NEWSPAPER

DESTRUCTION OF BUILDING

FOUR DEAD AND 20 INJURED

NO ACTION BY MILITARY

By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Rec. 7 p.m. Havana, Dec. 17. Cuba’s chaotic political situation took a violent turn to-day when an unorganised mob, supporting the Government and President Grau Martin, sacked and burned the offices of the newspaper El Pais, which has been sympathetic to the American policy of non-recognition of the Martin administration.

While preparing an edition the editorial staff were fired upon from surrounding buildings and forced to flee as flames spread. The mob broke the presses and carried away typewriters and other equipment. From an emergency hospital it was reported that several had been killed, but it is nob immediately known if they were pressmen or attackers.

The trouble started when a group of foreign workers, mostly Spanish, demonstrated against the new labour law requiring establishments to hire at least 50 per cent, of natives. Government supporters, many said to be soldiers in civilian clothes, dispersed the demonstrators, who then attacked the office of the El Pais. Neither the military nor the police made the slightest attempt to control them.

A final check of the casualties shows four killed, including two pressmen, and a score or more injured. Firemen were able to save the shell of the El Pais building but the interior was demolished.

A bomb exploded in the office of the Spanish-owned newspaper Diario de la Marina and slight damage was done, but there were no casualties.