Marshall Mission Files, Lot 54–D270
Memorandum by General Chou En-lai to General Marshall, General Hsu Yung-chang, and General Yu Ta-wei
Last night Mr. Chang Wen-chin, my secretary, notified Colonel Caughey verbally of the outrage which just then occurred at Hsia Kwan Station in Nanking. Colonel Caughey immediately took up the matter with General Yu Ta-wei who promised to transmit it to General Chen Cheng79 for taking proper action.
What actually was going on then was that the representatives sent down here by Shanghai civic bodies to sue peace were beseiged and severely beaten by some 200 well-organized Nanking secret policemen from 18:00 till midnight. Without showing mercy to any of them, the rowdies beat and insulted all the representatives and others, and robbed away their money and valuables. Throughout the outrage by-standing policemen and gendarmes looked on with complete indifference. Only until 00:30 this morning, when the representatives and other injured persons had collapsed on the ground and the rowdies had scattered, the Garrison Headquarters sent soldiers to the scene and carried the injured on a truck to hospital. Of the 12 people thus injured, 4 are Shanghai civic representatives, the rest being Nanking reporters and civilians who came out to meet the representatives. The names of these persons are listed on the enclosed sheet of paper.80
There should be no question that representatives of civic bodies to lodge petition to the Government should be protected by the Government, no matter of what nature those bodies are. In this instance, the representatives sent down by the Shanghai civic bodies came to sue peace and a termination of civil war, and they further planned to make representation to General Marshall and the Government and Communist members of the Committee of Three for no other purpose than wishing to be helpful to the proceeding of this Committee. In that light they should particularly be given protection.
I am deeply aware that the Committee of Three has always highly appreciated the views and opinions expressed by civic bodies and their representatives as well as personages of the society who were making every effort to bring about peace and termination of civil war. In this particular case the representatives from Shanghai not only do represent the civic bodies who elected them, but are also qualified to speak for the 50 to 60,000 Shanghailanders who went to the North Station to bid them farewell. On this account, the Government should attach importance to their cause, and, instead of allowing some 200 [Page 1192] secret policemen to commit this misdeed, the Government should sincerely receive them and listen to their representation.
In view of this, we lodge a strong protest to the Government against this incident and propose that the Government take the following measures in order to allay the anger of the public:
- 1,
- the Government shall issue an order that the culprits, held responsible for the beating of the peaceful Shanghai representatives at Hsia Kwan Station, be punished;
- 2,
- the Government shall issue order to make investigation into the responsibility of the policemen and gendarmes in connection with the outrage and impose due punishment on those being responsible for the negligence of duty;
- 3,
- the Government shall issue an order to disband the secret police organization of the Bureaus of Statistics and Investigation of the army and the Kuomintang Party, and pledge that no like incident would recur;
- 4,
- the Government shall issue an order to safeguard the rights of civic bodies and individuals to present petition to the Government;
- 5,
- the Government shall pay tor all medical expenses of the injured and indemnify for all their losses;
- 6,
- the Government shall be responsible for the safeguard of the representatives during their stay in Nanking as well as any other time thereafter.
It is urgently requested that the Government shall give a reply to the above-listed proposals at the next session of the Committee of Three.
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