Bloodshed and Massacre in China

Evening Star, Issue 19791, 15 February 1928, Page 4

Bloodshed and Massacre in China

Communist Reign of Terror

America Defends Naval Programme

Dramatic Story in Essex Murder

Trial

Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.

SHANGHAI, February 14. 'Atrocities surpassing in horror the bloody period of the Spanish Inquisition, and exceeding anything heretofore recorded in China are recounted by a missionary correspondent of a local British paper in a despatch from Swatow. The information was obtained from refugees from the afflicted districts of Haifung, Lufung, and Northern Kwantung, where the Communists, following on an orgy of bloodshed and massacre, established a reign of terror so terrible that the regular soldiers in several instances mutinied rather than obey the Government’s orders to restore order. Eye-witnesses tell of disembowelled Corpses in the streets being eaten by mongrel dogs, and of babies chopped to pieces in front of their mothers, w r ho .were themselves executed afterwards. .Women approaching childbirth were murdered in an unmentionable manner, and men’s ears and strips of flesh were cut off £*nd fried and eaten before the men were finally killed. Children were compelled to execute their parents. The Uncle of one who refused told him to proceed, and obey the will of heaven. The boy tried to behead his uncle, but bungled the job, which was finished by the Communists, and the youth was then executed because he was unable to kill his uncle. The Communists are endeavoring to identify the whole population with the movement, and the inhabitants are thus compelled in self-protection to inscribe on the houses an admission of sympathy with the Communists. When they refused they were immediately murdered by a variety of methods. The population was organised in groups according to age. Boys up to twenty were compelled to spy upon' the movements of their parents, and those over forty, who were considered useless, were classed with cripples, lepers, the diseased, and the blind, and -were slain by hundreds, according to a programme of economy to reduce the population by lone-third. The Communists’ headquarters are in two fastnesses in the mountains, where they hold huge stocks of ammunition, and machine guns cover points of approach. Hundreds of Roman Catholic mission protegees escaped and arrived at Swatow, whence they migrated to Siam and Singapore. It is reported that two Presbyterian missionaries were killed and six chapels burned. Numerous native temples were destroyed, and the inhabitants of one village who resisted the Communists were herded into a temple, which was piled high with combustibles, soaked in oil, and set afire.