* ever two beds, saying that the two

Spanish people cannot (Gibat shore scenes

The people of Barcelona — those who survived the horrors of war as d picted above and the

bloody reyfrisals that followed defeat of the republic — are implacable in their

hatred of the Franco

fascist regime, hoisted to power on Hitler’s bayonets and Chamberlain’s umbrella.

FIVE CANADIAN NUNS ARRESTED IN CHINA

Children kept under

‘appalling conditions’

OTTAWA

Arrest of five Canadian nuns at’ Canter by the Chinese People’s government is being blown up into
headlines by daily paper editors who see in the case an opportunity to weaken Canadian public sentiment

for recognition of New China.

The question has already been raised in the Housé of Commons by Davie Fulton (PC, Kamloops),

who asked what the government was doing about the arrests.

External Affairs Minister Lester B. Pearson,

pointing out that Ottawa had no diplomatic relations with Peking and therefore had no direct informa-
lion, viewed the charges as being “for Communist propaganda purposes.”

Most Canadian daily papers this week published an Associated Press dispatch from Hong Kong
which’ admitted that the nuns, members of the Roman Catholic order of the Sisters of the Immaculate

Conception, had buried more than 2,000 children in 18 months—they are charged with responsibility for

the death of 2,116 children under their care in a Canton orphanage.

The dispatch quoted an unidentified priest as saying that the children concerned were waifs taken

into a receiving station set up by the nuns when they were “dying, freezing or so ill of communicable

diseases that they could not be taken into the. orphanage the nuns operated. he
The priest acknowledged thai the nuns

that the nuns

These claims, and Pearson’s dismissal of the charges as

“buried more than 2,000 in 18 months,”

“brought more than 200 to some degree of health and transferred them to the orphanage.”
“Communist propaganda,”

but contended

are at sharp

variance with the facts as reported in the following dispatch (published as received) by a special corres-
pondent of New China News Agency.

CANTON

An_indescribably serligitnit treatment of pibhaos by an orphanage, run by the Soeurs Missionnaires
de Limmaculee Conception (Mission of Immaculate Conception) here, has resulted in the death of
2,116 children in the past 18 months. This is a d2ath list of no less than 94 percent of the total
charges who passed through this incredible murder factory.

This so-called orphanage was set |
up by the Soers Missionnaires de}
Limmaculee Conception, a Canadian
convent, ostensibly to care for poor
and abandoned infants. It is in
the charge of five nuns, all of Can-
adian nationality: Sr. Saint Al-
phonse du Redempteur MIC (An-
tonnette Couvrette), head of the
orphanage, Sr. Saint Marie Ger-
maine MIC (Germain Gravel), her
assistant, Sr. Saint Foy, MIC (Eliz-
abeth Lemire), Sr. Saint Vicotr
MIC (Germain Tangzay) and Sr.
Saint Germain MIC (Inulda La-
perriere).

The conditions in this place came
to light recently and I, together
with other reporters visited it. We
found only about 130 orphans still
remaining — sickly remnants of
those who had passed before them
to the grave. They were in a hor-
rible state of emancipation, sick,
bony and with transparent skins.
Out of every 10 orphans seven or
eight were ill. This could be seen
at a glance.

“An old woman caretaker hur-
riedly let down the mosquito nets

children in there were critically’
ill. On insisting that we _ look,

f]

however, these children were found
to be dead.

The orphans quarters were bare
and befouled. Dirty torn shreds
of army blankets served as_ bed-

ding. Some the children were kept
in locked rooms. The food was

rotten and stank... A self-respecting
farmer would not have fed it to
his beasts. meee

Medical care was negligible and
there was no medical equipment.
The assistant chief, Germain Gra-
vel, acted as the orphanage doctor
on the basis of two or three years’
training in a Canadian nursing
school. It was her practice to
hand out some drugs as she fancied
without written prescriptions. No
case histories were kept.

This was one of the immediate
reasons for the high death rate,
for which the orphanage authori-
ties were not the least concerned.
In the last one and a half years
they had not made any attempt
to improve the work of the orphan-
age.

For the Whole establishment there

were only two Chinese assistants,
oth being older orphan girls, apart
from eight 13 to 14-year old orphans
and two old women who did such
miscellaneous work as_ washing,
looking after the infants and gar-
dening. Two of these orphan girls
were blind, two others were crip-
pled, one was a deaf-mute, and
one of the two women assisting

| was blind.

Under the regulations of the or-

phanage no orphans could leave

until they were 21 years old. Until
then they were subjected to long
hours of manuel labor and other
forms of exploitation. The older
orphans who looked after the
younger ones were equally emaci-
ated and shoddily dressed and bare-
fotted.- Their
and colorless and they were afraid
to answer any of our questions,

In sharp contrast, however, the
nuns looked well fed, their quarters
being richly decorated and furn-
ished and their life in general was
one of comfort and luxury as com-
pared with the sordid conditions
in which Oe orphans were con-

eyes were glazed

|

PARIS

A broadcast of the clandestine
anti-fascist Radio Espana Indepen-
diente declared last ‘week that the
Barcelona: strike was a manifesta-
tion of the Spanish people’s oppo-
sition to Franco’s fascist regime,
and called on all Spanish workers
to express their solidarity with the
strikers. The broadcast added that
the Barcelona events could be the
starting point of a great popular
movement. against the Franco re-
gime.

Moscow Radio also reported in a
Spanish-language broadcast that
“the strike has its origins in a
considerable worsening of the Span-
ish workers’ misery and in Franco's

:| war policies which would sell Spain

to the Yankee imperialists.”

The same broadcasts mentioned
Franco's warmongering speech of
Marclr 10, declaring: “The answer
to his statements has been given
by the 300,000 Barcelona workers
who have placed before the eyes of
the world the indignation of Span-
ish workers.”

Reports from Spain received in
Paris describe Barcelona as “an
armed camp as the police patrol
the streets and hundreds of arrests
are being made throughout the
working-class districts.”

The fascist government, how-
ever, was unable to quell the great
strike movement, which extended
to the surrounding industrial
cities~of Sabadell, Badalona, and
Tarrasa.

On March 12, police fired on a
crowd outside the civil governor’s
palace, but foreign correspondents

were unable to verify the number
of injured people as they are all
under heavy guard. It was also
impossible to determine the number
of deaths.

The city, capital of Spain’s most
important industrial province of
Catalonia, was cut off from the
rest of Spain for a time as tele-
phone operators refused to accept
calls.

Court fosses

‘out Australian

gag legislation

SYDNEY

The Australian Communist party
last week hailed the smashing vic-
tory won when the Australian High
Court, by a six-to-one majority, de-
cided that the government’s anti-
Communist legislation was illegal.

The Communist party had been
ordered dissolved on October 21,
1950, when Prime Minister Robert
Gordon ‘Menzies had forced through
Parliament a series of sweeping
anti-labor measures,

The party, along with 11 power-
ful Australian trade unions, had
challenged the constitutionality of
the Dissolution Act, and succeeded
in winning several lower court, in-*
junctions against it.

Although the court was over-
whelmingly against the Act, the
Menzies government was expected
to appeal to the Privy Council in

rule the High Court.

Menzies ‘declared the Australian

government would continue its ef-
forts to outlaw the Comunist party, |
and there were reports that parlia- |
ment might be dissolved and a gen-
eral election called around the
issue.
\ Under the terms of the Menzies
government’s Dissolution Act, the
Communist party was ordered dis-
solved and its property forfeited.

The Australian governor-general
was given power to declare any or-
ganization ‘“Communist-controlled.”
Burden of proof to the cdntrary
rested with those accused,

Imprisonment was provided. for
any Australians who _ continuéd
membership or leadership in “un-

fined.

lawful” organizations!

Barcelona strike
expresses hatred
of Franco regime

London. This agency can still over-*

ROME

The general strike of the workers
of Barcelona has made a tremen-
dous impression among the Italia
people who remember that the
strikes of the workers in Turin and
Milan in March, 1943, were the pre-
lude to the overthrow of Mussolini
four months later.

What has also aroused widespread
comment is the peculiar coinci
dence that Pope Pius Twelfth made
a radio broadcast to “all workers
of Spain” on March 11. Text of
his message was published in its:

Spanish version in the Vatican OF —

gan Osservatore Romano.

The Pope’s ‘message appears to
be preoccupied by the social fer-
ment in Spain, a consequence of
Franco’s catastrophic . policy, and
attempts to justify the clerical poli-
cy. Evidently aware ofthe Spanish
workers’ hatred of the Franco .re-
gime, which has always had the

full and unconditional support of

the church, the me§sage emphasises
that “only the church can solve the
social question” — a statement in
which political observers see a Vati-
can effort to gather to its own ad-
vantage the discontent of the Span-
ish workers against Franco, if

order to prevent this discontent —

from developing under working

class leadership.

|

Luigi Longo, one of the organ-
izers and leaders of the Interna-
tional Brigades in Spain, now vice-
secretary of the Italian Communist
party, declared last week that
events,in Barcelona had a common
origin with recent events in Italy,
France and other countries of the
Atlantic bloc—‘a popular reaction
against” the war policy of Ameri-
can imperialism and its accomplices
in various countries.”

They were a protest against ris-
ing living costs—a first consequence
of the policy of war—and a mani-
festation of the will of the broad
masses to consciously oppose theil
governments, he said.

“The strikers of Barcelona ap-
pear, therefore, as another de-
tachment in the army of parti-
sans of peace who throughout the
world and in all conditions, even
the most difficult and dangerous,
struggle to defeat the promoters
of war,” he commented.

Led by the Spanish Communist
party, the resistance against the
Franco dictatorship had never
ceased, Longo said, and participa”
tion in the strike of other sections
of the people besides the working

class testified to the success of its |

policy of unity.

Eugene Dennis
released after
‘contempt’ ferm: -

NEW YORE

ae Dennis, general secretary

of the U.S. Communist party, said
in an interview last week that he
still does not consider a third world
war inevitable, although “the peril
of war has increased greatly.”

The Communist leader was inte!~

viewed the day after his releas®
from prison ,seated at his desk i?
party headquarters and “in fight

ing trim,” as he said of his condi-

tion the day before.

He was released from the West
Street federal prison in New York
on March 12 after serving out 2
term for contempt of the Hous
Un-American Committee.

Picking up the theme of his it-_

¢

itial comment on getting out from

behind the prison’s “iron curtain,”
Dennis called upon defenders 9
peace to expend greater effort tha?
ever to achieve th unity and actio?
that can “frustrate and defeat thé

war provocations of Wall Stree

and its allies.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH 23, 1951 — PAGE 10