MANY BURNED ALIVE

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 457, 19 May 1932, Page 1

MANY BURNED ALIVE

Men, Women and Children Slaughtered. LIBERIAN SAVAGERY ADMITTED United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received May 19, 11.30 a.m.) GENEVA, May IS. The killing and burning alive of men. women and children and the firing of forty-four villages were among the charges against the Liberian authorities which were admitted by the Liberian delegation to the League of Nations inquiry. The delegates asserted that these measures were necessary to maintain order. Eighty-one men, forty-nine women and twenty-nine children are known to have been massacred and many are believed to have been burned. The committee dealing with Liberian affairs resolved urgently to recommend the League Council to send a representative to the Kru Coast to assist in the pacification of the country and to encourage the tribes to return to their villages under conditions of security. Liberia is a negro state on the west coast of Africa, which is governed by negroes. Slavery, accompanied by brutal treatment of the tribes of the interior, was recently shown to be widespread in the state, and the League of Nations set up a commission to report on the existing conditions. As a result the Liberian authorities were informed that this practice must cease, together with that of forced labour, which was driving the people from their villages.