GROSS OWELTY ALLEGES

Taranaki Daily News, 6 March 1934, Page 7

GROSS OWELTY ALLEGES

PRISONERS IN AUSTRIA SHOCKING DETAILS GIVEN SOCIALISTS PERSECUTED MANY JOINING THE NAZIS By Telegraph-Press Assn.—Copyright. Rec. 7 p.m. London, Feb. 4. Extreme brutality continues in most Austrian prisons, which are filled with 6000 Social Democrats, says a special investigator of the News-Chronicle. Hundreds were beaten with rubber truncheons until they agreed to give evidence against their leaders in the approaching trials. Others were bayoneted in underground cells. The Heimwehr under Major Feys and Prince Starhemberg’s orders have ruthlessly searched workers’ houses, threatened to outrage the women, terrorised children and knocked out suspects teeth with their rifle barrels. As a result the workers are joining the Nazis wholesale—many simply in a spirit of revenge and “determined to be in at the death.” . , A Vienna cable says the Cabinet has approved a draft scheme creating a comprehensive trades union under the supervision of the Ministry of Social Welfare, grouping all privately employed wage earners but excluding civil servants and federal railway employees. The union will be empowered to conclude collective agreements, initiate the settement of collective disputes and safeguard the interests of its members.