DON'T LIKE SOVIET RULE

Chronicle (Levin), 17 October 1949, Page 5

DON'T LIKE SOVIET RULE

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Folitical Refogees Flee In Large Nambers

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Received. Monday, y.40 a.m. VIENNA, OCt. 16. Moi*e than 1,500,000 political refugees have fled from Russiancontrolled cotihtries since the war, aceording to figures collected by refugee organisations in Austria and Western Germany. Austrian pfflcials say that be-^ tween 1000 and 2000 people flee into lower Austria from Yugoslavia every month, while a steady movement continues across the ot-her frontiers diespite precautions by Huhgary and Czechoslovakia. American officials in Western Germany say that 500 political refugees enter every week The total of 1,500,000 does not include the large, unrecorded number who crossed into Austria iate in 1945. . On the Austro-Hungarian frontier two tall fences of barbed wire stretch the length of the frontier

j to stop Hungarians from leaving 1 their country. Between the fences is a mass of loose barbed wire to which are attached bombs that exrdode at the S'ighUst contact, with the wire. Five people have been-killed and a dozen or more injured in past weeks by these bombs Austrians living near the frontier say that they often hear machineguns during the night. On the Yugoslav frontier anyone approaching from either side is liable to be shot without warning from hidden Yugoslav frontier : posts. Austrian frontier guards have reported 26 deaths within the past 18 months. ' Czechoslovakia leads the Communist countries in its contribution to the flow. About 100 of her former citizens arrive illegallv in Western Germany every week. "The Czechs have a ten-mile-wide "police frontier" along the Ameri-, can Zone border. They have torn down all the houses in which fugitives might hide and helicopters of the Czech secret police make regular surveys over the area to spot escapees.