Jan. Refugee Magazine Junked

All 138,000 copies of the January issue of the official review of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees have been burned because the head of the agency felt its contents unfairly represented West Germany’s policy toward asylum seekers, his spokeswoman said today.

Jean-Pierre Hocke, a Swiss, ordered more than 100,000 copies of the magazine, Refugees, destroyed, the spokeswoman said. The issue cost about $50,000 to print. Hocke felt that a 17-page article prepared last summer on the treatment and plight of refugees in West Germany is no longer valid, the spokeswoman said. A spokesman at the West German diplomatic mission said his country, the third-largest contributor to the U.N. agency’s budget, played no role in the decision.