WIDE DISORDERS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20918, 19 October 1942, Page 3

WIDE DISORDERS

UNREST IN FRANCE WORKERsToR REICH CLASHES WITH POLICE (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (9 am.) LONDON. Oct. 18. Assassinations and attacks on Germans and German sympathisers are spreading in occupied France. According to reports reaching Vichy, there have been rfiany deaths and a large number injured in riots and disturbances. Following serious disorders in Lyons, strikes are spreading through occupied France. The Swiss radio reports that the National Guards at St. Etienne were forced to clear a number of factories, while at Grenoble and Chambery further workers are on strike. Reports nom the French frontier state that 10,000 men already arb involved in mass strikes. Tension is growing in the Lyons area, to which large numbers of Gestapo agents have been drafted. More than 100 are at present searching for secret radio stations at Charbonnieres, six miles from Lyons. Other agents arrived at Crepieux. Le Pape, north-east of Lyons, and Cessieu, west of LatourDupin. Agents are equipped with French identity cards and granted the same powers as French detectives. French police inspectors have been ordered to place themselves at-the agents’ disposal. Explosion at Lyons

The railway station at Lyons was the scene of an explosion. Carriages for workers being taken to Germany were destrpyed. It is also reported that French frontier guards have been strengthened to prevent workers for Germany fleeing. The Daily Express correspondent on the French frontier says that Lyons, Chambery and Amberieu are the principal centres of disorders. Riots broke out ~in these places on October 15, when the names of men chosen for labour in Germany were exhibited. Workers at Chambery refused to move the trains. Rioters at Amberieu destroyed rolling stock and locomotives. Fighting with the police and bombthrowing occurred in the centres, where tne workers struck and demonstrated in the streets. Troops were called out and used grenades against the crowds. The troops afterwards occupied factories, stations and municipal buildings, and patrolled the streets with armoured cars. Women at Annecy paraded with placards, “We won t let our husbands go to Germany.” . The Times correspondent on the French frontier says that 40 persons were killed and 200 wounded in Lyons a ll i . lilted and 200 wounded in Amberieu. Disturbances are also reported at Marseilles, Toulouse and farbes. \ Strikes Admitted The Vichy News Agency admits that strikes occurred at railway workshops in the Lyons region, “apparently owing to an erroneous interpretation of the conditions under which the recruiting of labour in exchange for prisoners of war is being carried out.” it added that work was resumed normally after several hours on the intervention of the local authorities and the Government without serious incident. The Vichy radio said that three ram loads of French workers from both occupied and unoccupied France, including women, left for Germany last night. The women came from a weaving mill near Angers; in northwestern France, 'from which both men and women were drafted. More women have been drafted from the -same mill. Reports from Paris state that sabotage is continuing throughout the country. Crops and grain storehouses are being burned. The Germans are now combing every factory in France for skilled workers. Employers have b.een instructed to prepare batches, includes' engineers and works managers, in Ihe hope that the present resistance to the departure of men to Germany may be overcome if the men from the same factory work together in Germany. , The Swiss newspaper, Tribune de Lausanne, says: “Feeling is very high The Laval Government’s attempts to provide Germany with man-power are meeting tenacious opposition, which it would be foolish to ignore if the situation among our neighbours beyond the Jura is sensibly judged.” Demands on Dutch' Dr. Boening, German commissar for man-power in Holland, demanded 70,000 skilled Dutch workers for Germany to reinforce the 300,000 Dutch already in Germany. Thirty thousand skilled Dutch metalworkers removed from their jobs last month were sent to Germany. Skilled Dutchmen are conscripted by a German foreman and appointed to Dutch undertakings as “trustees" for the workmen. Skilled workers are being replaced by unskilled part-time workers and unemployed, of which Dr. Boening estimates that there are still 100,000. - Fifteen Dutchmen .from The Hague taken hostage were shot for recent sabotage. Dutchmen living in Zeeland province and the greater part of north Holland, in the neighbourhood of coastal fortifications, have .been ordered to evacuate their homes. The Danish authorities have banned certain coastal areas for fishing or anchoring. General Hannecke, the new German military commander in Denmark, has forbidden German officers any social contact with the Danes. This regulation is being applied so drastically that it is even breaking up families in cases of mixed marriages.

Many workers have been arrested after new acts of sabotage in several industrial certtres in the neighbourhood of Oslo. The New York Herald Tribune’s Washington correspondent says that every town in France lias completed black-lists of persons who will be killed on the day of France’s liberalion and 1,000,000 Frenchmen will be slaughtered unless preventive action is taken, asserted M. Andre Philip, Commissioner of the Interior with the French National Committee. He said he believed that civil war could he averted only if General De' Gaulle makes a direct, personal appeal to the French people to refrain from private vengeance when the United Nations forces land in France.