Evening star., 1952-10-28
Koreo's POWs and the KremIin

According to the Communists there is only
one issue blocking a Korean armistice. The is
sue is the dispute between them and the United
Nations Command over the repatriation of war
prisoners. With a holer-t -than-thou attitude as
fake as a three dollar bill, and with the loud
support of the Soviet Union, they say that the
U. MS insistence that the repatriation must be
voluntary, not forced, is in violation of interna-
tional law and international practice and that
they therefore cannot and will not agree to any
such arrangement. Instead, being on the side Of
the angels, they demand that all captives be re-
turned whether willing or not-and at bayonet
point if necessary.
However, as far as international law and
international practice are concerned, the Com
munist argument has been ripped to shredS by
Secretary of State Achesons recent address to
the U. N General Assembly For Mr.. Acheson,
with devastating effectiveness, has shown beyond
dispute that the principle of voluntary repatria-
ton is fully supported not only by the implicit
meanings of the Geneva Convention but also by
numerous treaties, agreements and actions of
the past And to illustrate his point with partic-
uIar force, and with demoliShing irony, he has
cited no fewer than II different formal pactS
and similar understandings in which the Soviet
Union has unequfvocally proclaimed, embraced,
lauded and solemnly committed itself to that
very same principle-the very same thing that
it has rejected at Panmunjom, through its
Pyongyang- -Peiping puppets, as violation OF
the law of nations!
Thus, there is the German-Soviet Brest-
Litovsk treaty of 1918 in which the following
provision appears: prisoners of war OF both par
ties will be released into their homeland insofar
as they do not, with the consent Of the capturing
state desire to remain within the latter's terri
tory or betake themselves into another country"
Tho Sarne nrnviS0n-nften with even stronger
language emphasizing that repatriation must be
voluntary-can be found, among other places, in
the Kremlins 1919 pact with Denmark, its 1920
pacts with nations like France and Britain, its
1921 pacts with Poland and Turkey, its 1922 pact
with Austria, and its ultimatums to Nazi forces
at Stalingrad and in the Budapest area during
the Second World War. Certainly, never has
government had weaker ground to stand on than
the ground taken by the Stain dictatorship and
its stooges in insisting that it is without prece
dent and internationally lawless not to use bayo-
nets guns and other instruments of force to re-
turn unwilling Chinese and North Korean cap
tives to the tender mercies of their Red masters
As Mr. Acheson has reported to the Assembly,
the United Nations now holds about 121 900 Com
muniSt war prisoners. OF this total, $4,000
including 6,400 ChneSe-have expressed their
desire to go home But the reSt-38, ,000-have
declared that they will violently resist any effort
to return them to Red territory. These figures
have been arrived at through careful interroga-
ton and screening, and the U. N. Command has
invited an impartial check of its own findings.
The enemy has assaled those findings, but the
fact is that they represent an honest count of
the thousands who fearfully regard repatriation
as a passport to savage punishment, includ-
ing death. 1t is unthinkable that they should
be driven back. Simple humanitaraniSm, as
well as international law, argues unanSWerably
against that.