30,000 BUTCHERED.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20542, 18 February 1935, Page 1

30,000 BUTCHERED.

Chinese Reds Massacre City’s Population. United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. SHANGHAI, February 16. The news of one of the most atrocious butcheries of defenceless Chinese by Communists has reached Nanking in a report from General Liaochen, Divisional Commander of the antiRed force engaged in bandit suppression in Northern Szechwan. General Liaochen reports that it is estimated that 30,000 men, women and children were slaughtered in the most cold-blooded manner in the city of Wanyuen, in Szechwan, before the Reds evacuated the city under pressure of Government troops. Within a radius of thirty-five miles the population has been almost completely wiped out. The trail of the marauders is marked by smouldering ruins. Death by starvation is facing the survivors unless relief is immediately forthcoming. The first outbreak of the Reds, who now control most of the central part of southern China, occurred in May, 1925, since when they have slaughtered tens of thousands of fellow Chinese. The Red policy is anti-foreign, anti-imperialistic and anti-Christian; and the object of the massacres apparently is to establish the Reds more firmly. Chiang Kai-shek has been waging war on them for some years, with little success; for they are well supplied with wireless, know his movements beforehand and keep his army at bay. They rule within their own borders with rough justice and some efficiency, though with cruelty. Even the two Kuang provinces, which are not Communist, have a government independent of Nanking.