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The Committee also placed on record its sympathy with the SpanishRepublican refugees and its strong view that the Economic and Social Council should examine their case with particular care. Both in the committee stage and in the debate on the resolution which took place in a plenary session of the General Assembly, the Soviet Union and Yugoslav delegates, supported by a few others, made strenuousendeavours to modify some of the " guiding principles " set out in theresolution. They sought in the first place a stipulation that refugeesnot wishing to return to their own countries should be settled elsewhereonly with the consent of their Governments ; but on this proposal they accepted defeat in the committee stage. However, they carried to thefloor of the Assembly the following additional proposals : that no propaganda should be permitted in refugee camps against the interestsof the United Nations or against the return of refugees to their own countries ; that the personnel of the camps should be comprised in thefirst place of representatives of the refugees' own countries ; and that quislings, traitors, and war criminals hiding themselves under the guiseof refugees should be returned to their countries at once. It was left to the principal Soviet Union delegate, Mr Vyshinsky, toact as chief spokesman in support of these proposals, which gave rise toone of the outstanding debates of the session, with Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt,, of the United States delegation, and the principal New Zealand delegate,. Mr Eraser, taking the main parts in opposing them. The debate centred mainly on the anti-propaganda proposal, in which Mrs Roosevelt and Mr Fraser saw the danger of inroads being made into the fundamental rights of man, and freedom of expression in particular. Mr Fraser emphasized the difficulty of defining the point at which propaganda changed in nature from free discussion to dangerous intrigue or conspiracy against any country. It was unthinkable to say to such persons as. those members of the Polish Forces who did not wish to* return to Poland that, now that they were refugees or displaced persons,, their freedom of thought and opinion must be forsaken and forbidden to them. If in the operation of the principles which the resolution laid down it might be found that any refugee camp was a nest of intrigue and conspiracy against another country, it would be the plain duty of the responsible international body to put a stop to it. But they could not stifle honesty of thought even in a dispossessed person, even in people who had left their own country and who dared tothink in disfavour of the existing Government of that country and tobelieve that it could be replaced by a better one. That had been the privilege of refugees throughout the centuries —of such men asGaribaldi and Mazzini and-Marx —and no country that had gloried in liberty could be a party to preventing the exercise by any human being of his claim to human rights. Dealing with the proposal for the staffing of refugee camps of personsfrom the refugees' countries of origin, Mr Fraser declared that the conception that people who were opposed to the Government of their own country should be put under the control of those to whom they were

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