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From The Militant, Vol. X No. 39, 28 September 1946, p. 3
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Further proof of the reign of terfor now taking place in Greece was given in Robert Conway’s dispatch from Athens to the N.Y. Daily News on Sept. 17.
“The Greek government’s army and gendarmes are waging a pitiless war on scores of thousands of women and children in a desperate effort to halt a growing rebellion and wipe out not only Communists but all democratic, liberal and republican elements,” said Conway.
“This correspondent is compelled to state, that the supporter of King George II are now staging a total civil warfare of the crudest and most inhuman sort in the struggle to starve all anti-monarchists into submission, UNRRA food, trucks, shoes and clothing, as,well as UNRRA malaria-fighting airplanes are being unscrupulously used, not only by Greek army gendarmes and civil officials, but also by royalist bands composed of former Nazi collaborators.”
Conway also confirms the reports previously printed in The Militant about the completely fraudulent plebiscite on the return of the blood-stained monarch.
“Not only Communists, but democrats, socialists, liberals and republicans were disfranchised,” he reports. “Some were forced to flee into the mountains before the elections, while some lived in districts where the polls were never opened.
“The greater number were intimidated and terrorized when the officers of the Grieek army told the inhabitants that only those who vote for the king can escape being classified as Communists. ”
“On the entire long trip through cities and villages we saw outdoor prison pens where a few old men and many women, often with babes in their arms, and many children of all ages were ‘detained’ without charges, merely because they were relatives of nien who had fled to the hills for political reasons. They received no food ...
“The Greek officers frankly stated their policy was ‘to keep this up until the men in the hills come down and surrender rather than see their wives and children suffer’.”
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