Macedonian Horrors

Southland Times, Issue 19036, 2 May 1903, Page 3

Macedonian Horrors

" PICTURES IN BLOOD AND FIHE."

MURDER AND LUST AT LARGE

The follb-wing are extracts from the article by Dr E. J. Dillon in tho Contemporary Review to which wo devote a leading article this morning :— We have the authority of .Madame BaUhmetieff— who travelled about in tho deep snow with the thermometer at 22 Celsius below freezing point, to bring succour to the fugitives— for saying that two priests of the villages of Oranofl and Padesh were tortured in a manner which -suggests the story of St. Lawrence's death. They were not exactly laid on gridirons, but they were hung over a fire and burned with red hot irons. In the Djumaisk district six churches were destroyed, and the church of St. Elias was turned into a stable, while the shrine dedicated to the same taint in Shelesnitza was converted into a water closet. Tiho churches of Padcsh, Troskoff, and Serbinoff were razorl fo tho ground ; the school buildings in the Djumaisk district were used as barracks, and the teachers put in prison or obliged to flee.

On reading some of those experiences, ono begins to understand how it is that tho exhortations and promises of the Great Powers fall upon deaf ears in Macedonia. M. Westman declares that he saw women who had run away to save their honour and their lives, and were

huddled together in mountain fastnesses where the snow lay several foot deep ; and the wretched creatures were in on almost naked state. Some of them, he adds, had trudged along on foot, floundering in the snows for twenty consecutive days with mo shred of clothing but their chemises. Forty of the women who reached Dubnitsa aitd were cared for by Madame BakhnietiefT, were about to become mothers. 'He met tiny, bright-eyed little girls with disfigured faces filfuUy crying, fitfully - quivering in every limb, with manifest signs of having received a tjerrtble nervous shock. "'Knowing wjhat he knew of Turkish methods with female children,' he shrank -from questioning them about the cause of their suffering. Most of these misery-stricken Women and men were almost naked, wasted to skeletons, with, dull sunken eyes and pinched .cheeks. Several were mutilated or disfigured, and the livid welts, the open wounds, the horrible marks of the redhot pincers with which they had been tortured were witnessed by all. It was especially heart-rending to see mothers covered with scanty rags which could not shield from the, bitter cold the helpJess babes who .- were slowly dying at their mijkiess breasts.

Some episodes of this awful exodus can hardly be reproduced U\ an r-g® and country wont to eschew the use of the horrible and loathsome, even in the ennoWinjf service of humanity. Hut sota« of tiie .less .distressing . examples of "Turkish methods should fhid a place in any account .of Macedonia .which can justly lay claim to historical 'accuracy. One of the women in i)ubnitsa, who seemed more deiid than' alive; was asked by the Jcind-hearted lady why she looked so utterly crushed in spirit, now that the danger had passed and life, at any raj*;, was safe* Amid tears and fcighs and convulsive quiverings of the body the poor- creature told the sickening story of how her brother had had his head^cut off: before .her eyes,, .after 7hich 6he had to stand by while the ruffians chopped up his body into fragments. Several th.B agony of their tender daughters, children of from ten to thirteen—and heard their piercing cries as the men wTio> x wore the (Sultan"s coat subjected them to nameless violence. Numbers of .children succumbed to these .diabolical assaults, their last )o6ks; bejng' ~ turned ■ on their helpless parents or their smoking homes, jn one place twp: children— one aged eighteen months, the other /our years — had-, their skulls split open by the soldiers. Other little girls and boys were deliber-lj ately, and methodically tortured to! death, while a place was assigned to, their fathers ami mothers where they' were forced to listen to the agonising ; screams and watch the contractions of' the tender bodie9 each time that thai once' pretty faces were slowly flowered in&Sthe fire into which Turkish; liepper hitd^been plentifully scattered/This is inHruth a ton* of torture which only, a:deyil could have iuvented ; for 4ong_ before death releases the tiny mite, the eves fare said to start frqm their- sock- :\

ets and burst.

The' stories' of violence done to women are;, calculated; to drive pity wfld' with

paission. Snathe single village of^Vlakhi, injjiiie Melnijsky district, forty ; women, litfie girls 7 and little wcsr^*^tims of^he m^aerous lust of th|" armed bSn^B who. uphold the sway of the Sultaniiln ?.ii|>Putrilsky circuit there was ao't*a single," woman who was not subjected to those soul-searing pains which arejicnor&^dbadly than death. In Bubnitsaf the; of Madame Bakhmetieafstrphilantliropic • wo.rk, there pjre numbers; otohpsa ,poor creatures slowiy

recovering T^f£<«n the mere effects of these diabolical tO^tjires ! From the stories they tell the yeil of a foreign tongue cannot fitly be with-

drjiwh.

TJgi Porte takes. credit to its4f^before EurSpe lor en^ploying none but regular troops in Macedonia, foregoing the services, of Albanians -: and Bashibazooks. An(l3the fetatemeht is quite true. But

equally true and well-established .is the faetlthat the regular, soldiers are -the per- = petrators of thfjb blood-curdling crimes— ha^/that they i;6!n«bit them at times in the .Hresence offiiieir own officer?. Thus ii&tlfe hamlet^ Sof^Batshofl thirty-two I>easants were beaten almost to Ueath in the; .presence pf'the^ District (Kaimßkam) of Metouiia. In the village of DoTSfonishtshe, j&Oii superintendent of the

police', Eyoob EffeiKii. violated three little girls whose names have been taken by; ajadame BakhnietiefT. In Dobranit6ky the soldiers stripped thirty women td. the waist, while the head of the police 7 was stranding by. and having subjected them to various indignities, led itobn in that plight through the streets. A Sstfb-lieutenant, AH Eflendi by name. ravished three women in Godlyeff. Reshi&'Bey, ~ a captain, deflowered a girl >» Kedobinsk and then violated the daugh-ter-in-law of the parish priest of Dobronishtshe. J ' ? -

• Well docs Mr Dillon say that tbese arp'-'i '-' -scenes which com© tof one like dejjuily visidns from wut the plaguepp^iited mist of hell," and well also doesvrhe question whether; i they should Vncs«be .multiplied in ; "order to .sear thev,;spuls oi Christian peoples, to sting thfefr4 consciences and.^startle them into sbifieVkinfT'of beneficent" action." .But th%B^ Stories write the doom of the OtSSqjman Eflipire. This sentence jrbm Dr DifTol'9 article embodies a prophecy to wK^ v --aH:'.wiU : say " Ajnen !": Jf^ever theee stories are published in fqU they should be bound together with the vo|titne yet to be written which will record the history of the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The two narratives will Biipplenient and explain each other."