Applicable also to Citizens of all Non-Extraterritorial Nations Except Those Where Execution Now Abolished: Text of Memorandum from the Ministry of Justice Peking, Dec 21.
Before circulating a translation of the statement that appeared in the Bolshevist paper in Shanghai last month, Reuter's Agency 1D-quired ab the Ministry of Justice and was informed. that the Ministry had authorized the Harbin court to inflict capital punishment on Russian offenders of the worst type, that this applied only to Russians, and only to Russians in the Special Administrative area (Chinese Eastern Railway zone).
Since then some doubt has arisen as to the correctness Of the information and Reuter's Agency yesterday again made, inquiries at the Ministry of Justice regarding threa pOints, and to-day is informed that the information given last month was correct as far as it went, that the Harbin Court's request for authority to inflict punishment on Russian offenders was acceded to and that such authority necessarily only applied to that Court's jurisdiction, namely, the C. E. R. zone.
It was true, however, that such authority was based on the law introduced by the Ohihling Mandate of December 30, 1920, published in the Offici-Gazette of January 9, 1921. This law provided for capital punishment with certain restrictions being imposed on all non-extraterritorial nationalities, not only in the Chinese Eastern Railway zone but throughout China.
The first information can only described as misleading and unsatisfactory and it is difficult to understand why the Ministry should hesitate to state all the facts about a matter of such general interest.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.