RED RUBBER.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1773, 11 June 1913, Page 7

RED RUBBER.

REPORT ON PUTUMAYO SCANDALS,

SEVERE CENSURE.

"CULPABLE NEGLIGENCE" OF THE BRITISH DIRECTORS. OFFICERS' 'WANTON DEVILRY' By Telegraph—Press Association—OoDyrlghl London, June 9. The Putumayo Commitleo of Inquiry's report has been issued. It severely censures the British directors for culpable negligence with regard to the labour conditions of the Indians employed. Tho directors should not, says tho report, have lightly exposed England's good name. 111-treatment of Indians had vot been confined to l'utumayo, which was only a shockingly bad instance of tho conditions existing over a wide area of South America. The officers of tho company were described as "a gang of ruffians and murderers. who had shot from sheer lust f"r blood, ami had burnt, tortured, and violated in a spirit of wanton devilry." SWEEPING CONDEMNATIONS. (Rec. June 10, 11.25 p.m.) London, June 10. The Putumayo Committee declines to believe that the Indians were "bloodthirsty, ferocious savages." They wore simple people, of a naturally friendly disposition. The British grading Company was not 'entitled to spend money in the conquest of the Indians, and money so spent was ultra vires. There was 110 evidence that the British directors, individually, woro parties to any overt act which exposed them to charges under the Slave Trade Acts, but they were culpably negligent concerning the labour conditions prevalent under Guggius's reign, and ought to have known the devilish conditions under which they were making money. Lister-Kayc's liosition was different. He was apparently only a "decoy-duck" for the investors did not know tho .lan-. guage in which the board often conducted its proceedings, "but," states the report, "lie deserves censnrc for taking a directorship under conditions so humiliating." Arana and the other vendors, added .the Committee, had knowledge of tho atrocities which were perpetrated. Tho Putumayo Committee does not think that tho Peruvian case revealed any defect in Company Law, but the existing Slave Law should, it considers, ho consolidated and modernised. Moreover, the principle of "extra-territorial crime" should be extended to enable British offenders in forced labour cases to be brought to-trial in their own country.