The Vengeance of the Turk.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XVIII, 2 May 1903, Page 1253

The Vengeance of the Turk.

TORTURING THE MACEDONIAN PEASANTS. Dr. E. J. Dilion, who keeps the renders of the "Contemporary Review’’ informe I from month to month on foreign affaiis in general, has an article last month on “The Reign of Terror in Macedonia," in which he gives some idea of the unutterable horrors that followed the abortive insurrection last autumn. After the rising had fizzled out the Turks set themselves to search for arms and to inflict a terrible vengeance. The peasants fled in terror across the mountains, enduring frightful privations in their flight. We have the authority. Dr. Dillon says, of Madame Bakhntetietf (the American wife of the Russian Minister in Sofia)- —- who travelled about in the 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 cjranoif and Paclesh were tortured in a manner which suggpsts 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 cf St. Elias was turned into stable, while the shrine dedicated to the same saint in Shelesnitza was converted into a water closet. The churches of Padesh, Troskoff and Serbinoff were razed to the ground; the school buildings in the Djuntaisk district were used as liarracks, and the teachers put in prison or obliged to flee. The horror of the situation is intensified, Madame Bakhmetieff says, by the fact tliat large numbers of fugitives have been driven baek by the Turks into the interior southwards towards Seres, where their horrible sufferings and their miserable end will be hidden from all who might give them help or pity.

The Great Powers are not ignorant of these facts; and details far more harrowing are in their 'possession. The representatives of Great Britain, Austria and Italy called at the Russian Embassy and took copious extracts from Madame Bakhmetieff’s memoranda, which they forwarded to their respective Governments.

Czar Nicholas, on learning the facts, at once sent ten thousand roubles for those refugees who had escaped with their lives into Bulgaria, and then, but not before, the Bulgarian Government, theretofore fearful of offending the Great Powers, voted about five thousand pounds to alleviate the sufferings. But the other Governments either remained wholly indifferent or admonished the Macedonians to keep the peace or else be prepared to be left to their fate!

THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION

The Russian Vice-Consul at Philippopolis, M. Westman, crossed over into Macedonia in order to verify the incredible statements of many of the fugitives, and the startling results of his investigations were seut to the Foreign Office in St. Petersburg. Among other interesting facts he Vhzwe informs his Government that a belt of territory thirty versts broad, running parallel to the "frontier, typifies the abomination of desolation; the churches having been defiled and the villages partly burned to the ground, while the inhabitants have fled no one knows whither. In the interior of the country the situation was said to be equally bad, but this statement he had no means of verifying. He beheld quite enough, however, to perceive that the era of reforms is being inaugurated in a very incongruous fashion.

On reading some of those experiences of his, one begins to understand hew it is that the 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 feet deep: and the wretched creatures were in an almost naked state. Some of them, he adds, had trudged along on foot, floundering in the snows for twenty consecutive days, with no shred of clothing but their chemises. Forty of the women who reached Dnbnitsa, and were cared for bv Madame Bakhmetieff were about to become mol hers. He. met tiny, bright-eyed little girls with disfigured faces fitfully crying, fitfully quivering in every limb, with manifest signs of having received a terrible nervous shcek. Knowing what

he knew of Turkish methods with female children, lie shrank from questioning them about the cat: ' of their suffering. Many of the women and children reached Bulgaria in a woeful plight, v.i’th lacerated feet, wounded bodies, undermined constitutions. Madame BakluneticlT had most * f those whose lives were in danger taken care of in improvised hospitals. To the others bread and rough but warm clothing were distributed. 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 oi the red-hot pincers with which they had been tortured were witnessed by al!. It was especially he trirending to see mothers covered with scanty rags which could not. shield from tin- bitter cold the helpless babes who were slowly dying at their inilkl ss breasts. FLEEING IN TERROR. The flight of the Macedonians was the outcome of a general panic, which, paralysing reason, imparted the energy of madness to wild fear. The abortive October rising had but given a pretext to the Turks to wreak the vengeance which for years they had been meditating. and so ghastly were the inhuman forms l now assumed that nameless dread fell upon the people, and drove them to the mountains, to the glens, to caves, any whither from torture into death by hunger, or a more merciful end in the snows which lay piled upon the ground to a height of ten feet. Most people lied madly, without money or overclothes, the boys and men had no covering for their heads, many of the women were without aught but their nightgowns. It is certain that numbers escaped from fiendish tortures only to lose their lives on the pathless hills. Rarely did whole families manage to keep together, though some examples of this were met with, and several of the rebels in the Valley of the Struma succeeded even in driving some of their cattle before them. Worst of ail was the lot of the peaceful portion of the population, because, taken by surprise, they fled wildly and aimlessly as from a destructive earthquake, a cosmic disturbance. or consuming fire from heaven. Women weeping for their lost children, little girls srying for their slain parents, old folks limping or tottering with lac rated feet and shrivelled bodies, lamenting that they had lived to see all their descendants ent off at one fell stroke, were met with by Madame Bakhmetieff and her helpers. Here and there were children of twelve and thirteen driven forward by sheer cold and hunger, despite the fear which made them quake at every sound anil start at every breath of wind. DI ABO Lit A L TORTUR ES. Madame Bakhmetieff declares that she thus met numbers of half naked wretches—their names and story are recorded in her notes—whom she cured for in her makeshift hospitals and temporary refuges. On removing the froststiffened rags that still clung around them, the sight, of the open wounds caused the hearts of the onlookers to sink within them. Many of these horrible sores and indelible marks were produced by red hot pinchers or the instrument known as the Malaga." Some episodes of this awful exodus can hardly be reproduced in an age and country wont to eschew the use of the horrible and loathsome, even in the ennobling services of humanity. But some of the less distressing examples of Turkish methods should find a place in any account of Macedonia which can justly lay claim io historical accuracy. One of the women in Dnbnitsa. who seemed more dead than alive, was asked by the kind hearted lady why she looked so utterly crushed in spirit, notv that the danger had passed and life, at any rate, was safe. Amid tears ami sighs 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 which she had to stand by while tile ruffians chopped up his body into fragments. Several witnessed the agony of their tender daughters. children of from ten to thirteen—and heard their piercing cries as the men who wore the Sultan’s coat subjected them to nameless violence. Numbers of children succumbed to these diabolical assaults, their last looks being turned to their helpless parents or their smoking homes.

In one place two children—one aged eighteen month.% the other four years—had their skulls split open by the sold* iers. Other little girls and boy? were deliberately and methodically tortured to death, h hilc a plaice was assigned to their fathers and where they were foieed to listen to the agonising screams and watch the contractions of the tender bodies each time that the once pretty faces wore lowered into the tire into vbirh Turkish pepjaer had been plentifully scattered. This i*» in truth a

form of torture which only a devil could have invented, for long before death releases the tiny luiie, the eyes are said to 'tart from their socket* and burst. No human being can even hear of these horrors without a phy-icnl shad tier and acute moral juiin at the thought that sm-lt things dtoukl Ite done on God’s earth in the twentieth century, and that. |tur]Hi<cly ignoring them. Chri-tiau States should deliberately go to work to perjietuatc the Power that perpetrates them. u