THE CHINESE PRISONERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6514, 17 June 1899, Page 6

THE CHINESE PRISONERS.

COMPLAINTS OF. ILIr-TREATMENT,

On their "release from • custody^ those Chinese who had been arrested on Sunday night and had been unable to find bail, complained of the treatment they had received, and the Rev J. J. Doke made inquiries into the matter.

Questioned last night by a representative or the "Lyttelton Times," Mr Doke said that the Chinese had suffered very severely from the treatment they had received. Apparently the police had been quite unprepared for such am influx of prisoners, and he should say that they had been taken quite off their heads. * On their way to the police station, the men had been made to walk in the middle of the road, and naturally bad taken a great deal of mud into the cells, making the floors foul and dirty. There were no beds in the cells, and although it was a cold night, the Chinese had very little covering but their own clothing The supply of blankets appeared to have Been quite inadequate, as the men informed him that there was only one blanket between four or five. Ori Monday morning, many of them got little or no breakfast. The men had been distributed between four cells, and they informed him that the breakfast supplied to the inmates of the largest cell consisted of three pannikins of tea and three slices of bread and butter between twelve men. In two other cells, containing eleven and eight prisoners respectively, the supplies were about the same, and the five men in the fourth cell received only one pannikin of tea and two pieces of bread and butter.; When they were remanded on Monday, seventeen of the Chinamen were unable to find bail, and were kept at the police station. They received no midday meal, and were not given any food till about .six o'clock, just before they were, sent to Lyttelton. Some of them were thus practically without food for nearly twenty-four hours. Did the men ask for more food at break-fast-time? "Yes," said Mr Doke. "They tell me that they asked and were refused. Of course you will understand that the Chinese could nofc claim their rights as a European could. ' Their requests would probably seem to the watchhouse-keeper to be a meaningless gabble, and so be taken no notice of." Have any of the men been ill since? "Some of those attending our mission class were on Thursday still shaking with cold, and one of them has developed a very heavy cough- The whole affair was a muddle on the part of the poHce. The men should not have been run in so promiscuously. The police must have known that there was to be a big gathering of Chinese that night in view of the halfyearly festival, and yet they appear to have been quite unprepared to accommodate their prisoners. Most of the men have, of course, got clear, but you see what they have lost. They have lost not only their work during those days, but in their own eyes their characters. None of them have ever been in gaol before, and they feel the disgrace very keenly."