HORRIBLE SUFFERINGS OF ARMENIAN CATHOLICS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 205, 9 March 1877, Page 3

HORRIBLE SUFFERINGS OF ARMENIAN CATHOLICS.

The ' Missions Catholiques ' gives a painful picture of the persecutions inflicted on the Catholics of Armenia by the barbarians, Redifa (reserves) and Bashi-Bazouka. The church at Gorzoul, diocese of Artvin, has been rifled, and the ciborium, with its sacred contents, stolen away. One of the bandits was arrested, and the clergy summoned to prosecute, but they were secretly told that if they obeyed they would be slain, and they knew it was no idle threat. About the same time four or five Catholics were foully murdered for the sake of the money in their pockets. No complaints were made, as it was known that the authorities were either connivt ing or powerless. At Kars, a rather famous place, the Redifs, to the number of twenty, entered and robbed the priest's house ia the middle of the night. To prevent the alarm being given they rolled the cure up in his own bed-clothes, and so roughly that he was nearly smothered. The mudir, or under-governor, of Zeytown, had a Catholic servant, whom he submitted to horrible tortures for some household irregularity. One of these was to drive needles into the fingers between the nails and the flesh. Then the wretched creature was suspended by the feet in the stable, so that his heai just grazed the ground, and in this position he was swinging backwards and forwards like a monster pendulum. When the general population heard of the outrage it was indignant, but the mudir denounced the people as having taken up a " Bulgarian attitude," and this ominous expression stifled all remonstrance. At Biredj«?k, the Redifs did what they liked with the Christians at large, beating the men, grossly insulting the women, and threatening death at the slightest resistance. The clergy sent indictments to the grand vizier, whereupon the governor compelled them to withdraw them on pain of slaughter, and they consented in order to save a fearful massacre, for which the Turks were impatiently waiting. It is openly declared in the bazaars, by the Moslems, that if the third ban of the reserve is called out the men will #o, but before setting forth to the front they will murder all the Christians in the province. The same fanatical and alarming language is uttered in various other provinces as well, and terrible is the apprehension. On the 21st of August a band of 230 Rddifs, while billeted in the village of Sari-Hamza, appropriated everything they wanted, without payment, and then sallied out into the streets, where they committed the most horrible outrages. Many of their victims died under their abuse. The men of the village had to fly to the mountains to escape masssacre, and the governor was either unable or unwilling to do anything. — Indo-European Correspondence.