893.00B/660
The Soviet Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to the German Embassy in the Soviet Union, for the Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs97
On May 27, at the time of the raid upon the Consulate General in Harbin, 37 Soviet citizens who happened to have called at the Consulate General were arrested. Notwithstanding the demand for their release made by the Government of the Union in its Note of May 31, the said persons remained in custody during the course of many months.
In the court trial which was arranged for them, an attempt was made to justify the lawless raid upon the Consulate General and the unfounded arrests of the Soviet citizens there present at that time. That trial was conducted with complete disregard of all established rules and of the established mode of legal procedure. All requests on the part of the accused and their counsel, concerning the production of evidence, confrontation, etc. were summarily declined by the court on the ground that everything was already clear to the court before the trial. The accused were not even permitted to see the originals of those “documents”, which already had been repeatedly denounced by the Government of the Union as forged, and which, together with the fact that the accused had been calling at the Consulate General, were the only actual evidence of the charge in court.
A trial of this kind must necessarily arouse the strongest indignation not only in the U. S. S. R., but also in other countries, including China itself. Nevertheless, on October 15 a verdict inflicting long terms of imprisonment upon the accused was pronounced.
The Government of the Union feels constrained to state that the trial, as its whole progress has shown, was nothing but a monstrous court comedy to which the Government of the Union does not attach any legal importance, and which it regards as an attempt to camouflage the latest lawless outrage upon Soviet citizens.
- Translation from text printed in the Moscow Izvestia, No. 242, October 19, 1929; copy transmitted to the Department by the Minister in Latvia in his despatch No. 6502, October 23; received November 8, 1929.↩