SOCIALISTS AND STRIKERS

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 390, 15 April 1902, Page 2

SOCIALISTS AND STRIKERS

SERIOUS RIOTS. FIREARMS AND BAYONETS USED. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Brussels, April 13. Four thousand strikers near Charleroi awaited a train bringing Flemish workmen from the mines. Mounted troops cleared the street and occupied the station to protect the Flemish men. A riot followed. Volleys were exchanged between the troops and the strikers. A girl was killed, and many others wounded. A general miners’ strike in Charleroi district has been ordered to commence on Monday. The gendarmes frequently charged the mobs in Brussels streets on Saturday, using their swords and bayonets. Several were killed. SITUATION BECOMING SERIOUS. FIGHTING IN THE STREETS. THREE PERSONS KILLED, AND ONE HUNDRED WOUNDED. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Brussels, April 14. The situation in Belgium is very serious, though the Government is confident of being able to quell the disturbances. After the open rupture in the Chamber of Deputies, the Government arrested Vandenevelde, a chief Socialist leader, though he was subsequently released. His followers were incensed, and there

was street-to-street lighting in Brussels in the evening, several mobs using revolvers, iron bolts, and glass bombs filled with corrosives. The gendarmes used their swords and rifles, and a hundred were wounded, and at least three killed, There was a ghastly struggle for the bodies of the fatally-wounded men, whose clothes were stripped off before the gendarmes were successful in their efforts to secure them. Later on the rioters made determined and fruitless efforts to secure the corpses of the two rioters from St Pierre Hospital, the object being to exhibit them and thus inflame the populace. j The troops threaten to fire on anyone j opening the windows. A number of women were wounded in the disturbances. Bioting also occurred at Liege and Lazonviers. Twenty thousand Socialists and three thousand Liberals quietly demonstrated at Charleroi on Sunday in favor of universal suffrage. King Leopold is at Ostend. The Socialist leaders have published a violent appeal to the peonle to take universal suffrage by storm if Parliament denies it.