HERDED BEHIND BARS.

Hokitika Guardian, 14 December 1928, Page 8

HERDED BEHIND BARS.

HORRORS OF IT BLIP PRISONS. OAPKTOW.N October 21. Tliti c• <ni<liLions in which convicts exist. in Portugal's tropic prisons sire horrible. I have visited two ol tliese Portuguese prisons in Africa,one at Lonmin, on the west coast, a port north of Bciiguella: tin* other at .Mozambiuue. on the cast coast. The Andamans, the ijjril.ish tropic prison lor Indians which 1. visited some years non. is a paradise in comparison with them. Inside Luanda prison I found hundreds of convicts restin'' from their labours. Natives and white men. like toil-worn beasts, had crept to the shadow Hung by a huge wall and sprawled there, exhausted. it is despicable that, white men. herded like animals behind iron bars, should be or. view to the curious. And some of the dungeons I saw at Moz:i’"biq'ie would lie considered a scandal in a Kuropean zoological gardens if animals'had been kept in them. The dungeons were built during the days ot the slave traffic in Africa. Xow, by an ironical contrast, white men are kepi in these dungeons and guarded by black soldiers. There are even women in tins tropic hell. One pretty woman from Lisbon was brought: here seven years age. She had murdered her husband after discovering that he was unfaithful to luv She is made to work on the coral reel where the sun beats down merciless!v Living in the same room with her is another white woman,, the wife of one of the prisoners. Her husband was sentenced to transportation after a trial for murder, and she insisted on going with him. She lives there, happy in seeing her husband occasionally,