THE UN REPORT CAN BE PUT TO THE TEST

NEWS OF WRITERS AND ACTORS Cultural life is so flourishing in Hungary today that it is difficult to imagine the country was reeling under the shock of insurrection only eight months ago.

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through the prism of their class preconceptions, and who to a great exlent merely repeated what had already been said over Lr the Soviet Government and the Kadadr administration and over again by Hungarian communists and socialists and wish to challenge the findings of the United Nations by foreign friends of the Hungarian workers. special committee on Hungary. one clear course of That tribunal is the Hungarian working class. which is far action is open to them. from having said its last word on the matters to which the special committee devoted its five months’ labours.

Let them appeal to the working-class movement of the world to set up its own commission of inquiry. with the participation By an illuminating accident the day the committee's report of Yugoslavia. China and India. appeared was the very day chosen by Hungarian Stalinism to excel even its Russian masters in an act of savage retribution.

Even the sternest socialist critic of the second Russian intervention in Hungary would have confidence in the findings _ Three young people who had been sentenced to terms of of such a commission. imprisonment for “counter-revolutionary” activity were senFailing this. the report of the special committee cannot but tenced to death on appeal. carry enormous weight, despite the fact that it consisted of They included the 30-year-old journalist Gyula Oberszovrepresentatives of Australia. Ceylon, Denmark. Tunisia and sky and the 27-year-old playwright Jozsef Gali, who had been Uruguay—and the description of the report as a ‘crude. false. sentenced to three years” and one year’s imprisonment respecdisgusting job’, as ‘interference’ in Hungary's “domestic af- tively for writing and producing an illegal newspaper. fairs’ and as a ‘deceitful report’ carries no weight at all.

These details were omitted from the report which the Daily If the Soviet Government had confidence in its argu- Worker placed inconspicuously apart from its treatment of ments about “White Terror’ and ‘counter-revolution’ then why the United Nations document, did it not utilize the special committee as a platform from Omitted also was a section of the Reuter report which attriwhich to proclaim the truth?

buted to the judge the remark that ‘the case must be considered as a political question’.

Would not stand examination The Kadir régime was conceived and born in slaughter.

It had every opportunity to present its case to the commilthis act of the pecan Supreme Court shows that terror is tee: by failing to do sa it not only showed a sovereign conthe only mean by which it can remain alive. tempt for world public opinion, but also recognized in deeds that its reasons for this aggressive act would not stund critical ; ane agony of the Hungarian people goes on. Their cup is examination. ull.

War administration. too, had the opportunity of stat- In studying and evaluating the special committee’s renort ing its case. By failing to do so it, too. displayed before the on a nation in agony one objection must be met: that this whole world its lack of confidence in ils contentions. is a report from a capitalist source. and that therefore its assessment of events in a socialist country is suspect.

Above all, by refusing to grant the committee permission to conduct its jnvestigations on Hungarian soil. Kadar made it Tn reply to this a number of arguments suggest themselves. abundantly clear that he has much to hide, both about the First. the committee went about its work, as even the most present and about the past. and that his White Papers on cursory examination of the report shows, with scrupulous, not ‘counter-revolution’ and “White Terror are documents which to say rigorous. fairness. carry so little authority that their authors fear an impartial test.

Tt was up to Kadar to produce the ‘White Terrorists’, ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and “fascist plotters Not communist journalists, novelists and playwrights, Vir.