POLAND

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 19 January 1931, Page 5

POLAND

TYRANNY AND BRUTALITY HOW ELECTIONS WERE CONDUCTED ENGLISH VISITOR’S STATEMENT (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received 19th January, 10.55 a.m.) LONDON, 17th January. Doctor Marion Phillips, M.P. told a representative of the “Sun-Herald” cable service that the Polish elections were responsible for tyranny and brutality. She had just returned to London. She says some brutalities were suggestive of orientalist and sadistic terrorism of the worst Russian type. There were hundreds of arrests on trumped-up charges. Doctor Libermann, an old member of the Socialist Party was thrust into prison and released after the elections without trial with fifteen gruesome wounds across his body. He is now a permanently broken man. Poland was seething in ferment for which the Pilsudski regime was responsible. “I asked them what was the need for such desperate action. They said because the deputies had immunity. They committed crimes against the penal code and we considered the Polish politicians had to learn to be men with a sense of responsibility. Officials were sent round the villages telling the peasants if they voted against Pilsudski the taxes would be doubled, while the electors, in some parts were told that if they did not show the officials what candidate they were voting for they would he regarded as voting against the Government. Some booths were closed at midday because it was declared 100 per cent, had already voted. Some voters in order to hide their voting papers carried them in their pipes and others hid them in cartloads of hay. These are merely examples'of the hundreds of abuses.”