A HUNGARIAN TORTURED.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 October 1928, Page 7

A HUNGARIAN TORTURED.

TERRORISM IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA. LONDON, August 20. Hitherto unpublished details of the terrorism being practised against Hungarians in Ozeoho-Slovakia, and particularly in the city of Kassa, are now reaching London. They indicate organised oppression and a system of brutality comparable only with the Spanish Inquisition at its worst period. Peaceable Hungarians are thrown into prison and kept many months without trial or without charges being made against them, the Bohemian police in the meanwhile trying to force incriminating statements from them by torture.

Sucl) a, case was recently brought to the notice of the Czecho-Slovakian Parliament by M. Jules Koczor, a representative of" the Hungarian minority, who risked his own freedom to secure justice for a compatriot named Josef Aiagyar. BARE SOLES BEATEN. He told his fellow-members of Parliament that in March 1927 Magyar an official of Kassa, was arrested by three Bohemian policemen. ' At the police station he was assaulted by his captors who demanded to know when lie was last in Hungary and what he did there.

When he replied that he had not been to Hungary his boots were torn from his feet and his bare soles belaboured for a long period with rubber failedel- berewtheh -'them ecen thes truncheon. Even this treatment failed to satisfy the police, w r ho then tied Magyar’s hands behind-liis back to a pole which revolved at such a speed that it caused blood to gush from his mouth and nostrils. The mail’s nerve was broken, 1 and in this condition he, signed a statement which had already been prepared without his knowledge. M. Jules Koczor demanded from the Government a statement on this matter, but none was forthcoming, and the Czeclio-Slovakian authorities took steps to prevent a report of his speech in Parliament being published in the country. A report did appear in the early editions of the Magyar-llirlip”, the principal Hungarian newspaper of Czecho-Slovakia, but these were immediately suppressed by the authorities and . the publishers compelled to issue subsequent editions with a blank space where the Parliomentary report appeared.

NO HUNGARIAN SAFE. Other details of attacks upon Hungarians visiting their relatives and friends in the neighbourhood of Kassa, which before the Treaty of Trianon and a part of Hungary, have also reached London. A Hungarian now in London, who is in close touch with Czecho-Slo-vakian conditions, said yesterday: “There is a veritable reign of terror in the Kassa district. The Czechs are endeavouring to stir up trouble with the object of demonstrating to their own nationals and the world at large that there is a widespread conspiracy against them in these stolen provinces.” They are not hesitating to employ agents-provocateurs, and the flimsiest of pretexts is enough to secureOhe arrest and imprisonment of a Hungarian, whether he or she is a native of the province or a visitor from Hungary. If it should he a visitor and it is established that he is a member of an Hungarian athletic club or even a village club, he is certain to be sentenced to •a long term of imprisonment. In Kassa police station there is a chamber of torture, and no one of Hungarian blood is safe from brutal treatment.