# Interpellation on the torture of persons arrested in Vilnia

- URL: https://syn.by/en/history/archives/interpellation-torture-persons-vilnia/
- Published: 1924-06-28T19:35:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-12T01:51:13+00:00
- Section: Archives
- Language: en
- EN edition: https://syn.by/en/history/archives/interpellation-torture-persons-arrested-vilnia.md
- BE edition: https://syn.by/historya/arkhivy/interpeliacyja-katavanniau-aryshtavanych.md
- RU edition: https://syn.by/ru/istoriya/arhivy/interpellyatsiya-delo-pytkakh-arestovannykh.md

> Members of the Sejm ask the Minister of Justice to release from the Vilnia prison arrested persons who were beaten and tortured in the political police in order to extract the required confessions. They relate five specific cases and ask whether the guilty will be punished.

![](https://syn.by/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/illustration-6660-1024x585.webp)

of the members of the Sejm from the Belarusian Club to the Minister of Justice, concerning the immediate release from the Vilnia prison of arrested persons who were compelled by torture to sign the protocols accusing them.

Since Poland's occupation of the Belarusian lands, the Belarusian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian intelligentsia, artisans and peasants have suffered inhuman persecution at the hands of the government authorities. This persecution has gone so far that for the mere fact of belonging to a non-Polish nationality the state police lays its hand on the most sacred right of civilized peoples: personal liberty.

Thus Belarusians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and others who demand from the Polish authorities their rights, trampled at every step, are arrested by the police, inhumanly tortured, and have false protocols drawn up against them; the arrested, often already unconscious, are forced to sign them. The accusations composed in this way are sent to the investigating judge, and the arrested to prison. The investigating judge conducts an investigation for 1–2 years into persons supposedly accused of some kind of state treason, thus forcing innocent people to serve a sentence on account of false accusations by the police.

In proof of this we present the following facts:

In March of this year the lawyer S. Mickiewicz, as defense counsel, came to the prison in Vilnia in order to see the Lithuanians Umbras, Žemaitis, Tiunelis, Pagulia and Tamulevič, accused of political offenses. All the accused under Art. 111 of the Criminal Code, whom the lawyer questioned one by one, declared that they had admitted guilt under compulsion and under the influence of torture that took place in the political police: 1) Antoni Umbras, a pupil of the Lithuanian gymnasium, declared that in the political police he was beaten on the heels with a rubber truncheon and on the face; 2) Jan Kumpa, a pupil of the teachers' seminary, was beaten by Kudzevich and his assistant Bobr with a rubber truncheon on the back and the heels; afterwards he was beaten from behind on the neck and on the face, and his hair was pulled out in an extraordinarily painful manner; 3) Józef Tiunelis declared that, tied up, he was beaten with a stick, cartridges were pushed between his legs and between his fingers, and afterwards he was beaten on the heels with a rubber truncheon; 4) Mieczysław Žemaitis declared that in the political police he was beaten by the aspirant Rudzevich, a second man, pockmarked and fair-haired, and a third, a brunet. They beat him in a specially prepared room, on the face; they beat him on the back with a rubber truncheon, tied his hands, thrust a stick behind his knees and beat him on the heels with a rubber truncheon. Rudzevich beat him most of all on the face; 5) Franciszek Tamulevič declared that in the political police he was beaten 5 times on the face, his hands and feet were tied, a stick was thrust between his legs and he was beaten on the heels with a rubber truncheon. One of those named stated that he handed to the prison administration an appropriate complaint about this torture by the political police, but it was torn up before his eyes.

Presenting these facts of the inhuman persecution of the population by the police in Poland, the interpellants ask the Minister: 1) does he intend immediately to annul all the indictments drawn up on the basis of police protocols signed under compulsion of inhuman torture, and to release the arrested from prison? 2) does he intend immediately to hand over to the judicial authorities the investigators and policemen who committed crimes by torturing the arrested and by drawing up false acts of accusation?

Warsaw, 18 June 1924.