THE RUMANIAN DISORDERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13453, 1 June 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE RUMANIAN DISORDERS.

A FARMER'S TERRIBLE VENGEANCE A tekkiblb act of savagery is reported, .says Renters Bukharest correspondent, to have occurred in the village of Viasuu, in the district of Mehedjntz, during the re- . cent revolts. This village has a small population of about 160 families, who are all fairly well-to-do. During the time of ;: agitation the inhabitants were quiet, but one day a band of recruits returning with a, few peasants from'a. fair created a disturbance, and finished up by setting fire to three maize granaries belonging to a farmer named Vintilescu. Three days later a j platoon of infantry arrived in the village and, seeing the burnt granaries, asked the farmer if there -vas any agitation- among the peasants. Tito farmer replied that •'- .» J there was no agitation, but that the peaI sants of the village had set fire to th-o granaries, and he presented to the officer , in command a list of men who, he alleged, jihad been the ringleaders. The officer then went from house to house and invited the . peasants to come to the administrative I'office, as he wished to communicate to 'them the new Government's intentions, as , 'well as to thank them for the order preserved in the village. j. ! Some twenty to twenty-five peasants . went. Seventeen of these men, among, them an old man of eighty named lon Con-' . stantinescu, who had been in his younger days Professor, Judge, Councillor, and Mayor, were thereupon charged with having se"t fire to the granaries. They were . . condemned to death, ranged in.?, row, and shot dead then and there by the troops. The officer who commanded, not bcin,; satisfied that all were dead, afterward* fired a bullet into the head of even.- one.. The next clay eight more peasants were shot in a pit at the other end of the village. Another was brought out of the hospital in a dying condition, being denounced by the farmer Vintilescu as a rioter, and shot dead by the soldiers. A son of the" old man CoiK-tantuicscu, an engineer of the local railways, whosebrother was killed at the same time as his aged father, has arrived at Bukharest to claim justice. The affair has caused a painful sensation in the capital. p