REPRESSION IN RUSSIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9600, 21 September 1909, Page 3

REPRESSION IN RUSSIA.

A lengthy memorial on the repression in Russia has been addressed to Sir Edward Grey on the inititaive of the Russian Parliamentary Committee. It was signed by the Bishops of Hereford and Birmingham, L'ird . Courtney, the Deans of Worcester, j Durham and Hereford, Lord Arm.t- j stead, Earl Russell, 54 membtrs 'f . Parliament, 22 magistrates, and | many other representative persons. The memorial states: "It is in no spirit of ungenerous remonstrance—that we are constrained to observe that for four years a system of repression has been maintained in Kussia which has not relaxed its severity, though the evidences of any organised revolutionary movement have dwindled and disappeared. There has recently been anannuunc ement of some relaxation in particular districts, but the greater portion of the Empire remains, in time* of peace, under some form of martial law. The number of capital sentences un civilians for the period between October, 1905, and December, 1908, hasieached 4,002.and the number of executions was officially stated to be 2,118 Over 180,000 persons-a total which has more than doubled since 1905, criminal? and political offenders are crowded together in prisons built to hold 107,000. In most of these prisons epidemic diseases, and especially typhus, are prevalent; the sick and the whole lie together; their fetters oven in cases of fever acre not removed In some prisons the warders systematically beat and mal- j treat thi sick and the whole alike There is also evidence of more deliberate tortures employed to punish the defiant or to extract confession from the suspect. That no direct intervention is possible we fully realise, nor do we wish to enlarge the area of international controversy. But there are probably means by which a friendly Government may (exert an influence to ameliorate the lot of those who are suffering under the evils which we have described. I The infliction of such wrongs upon / Russians, and the indignation which they excite among ourselves, are I relevant and important factors in our mutual relations, of which the I two Governments should be fully 1 informed."