TURKISH TORTURES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 994, 8 December 1910, Page 5

TURKISH TORTURES.

NEW METHODS NOT MODEL. PEASANTS BEATEN TO DEATH. Uy Telegraph-Press ABscciation-Copyrifjht. London, December 0. • The SoSa correspondent of ''The Times" states that 4980 persons' were beaten and tortured in. Macedonia in counection with the disarmament. Sixty-four were maimed for life, and eleven . died,

REVOLTING CRUELTIES REPORTED. Official dispatches received at Athens in October furnished revolting'details of tho cruelties perpetrated by order oi the military committees in the disarmament of the Macedonian population. Bulgarian peasants aro the principal .victims, anil there teems no reason, wrote "Ihe limes correspondent, to believe thai, the accounts of their sufferings, which havo been communicated by Greek ofncials, aro open to a charge of serious exaggeration. In the vilayet of Kosovo the flogging of peasants for the purpose ot compelling tnein to give information with Tegard to concealed wemjons is being carried out on an extensive scale, and _in somo cases death has supervened. lno Dragoman of the Italian Consulate at Uskub Was present at tho funeral of ona of tho victims at Kumanovo. Ihe Umsulates at Ustab were visited by a party qt ten peasants whose bodies boro .the marks ef scourging as well as ot tho ropes by-which they were bound to trees. In the district of Kochane, where .martial law was proclaimed, tbo Christian population has suffered severely. A .party ot 49 persons .from this district, including two priests and five monks, were brought in chains' to Uskub. The prisoners were scarcely able to walk owing to the maltreatment to which they had been subjected. One of them related , that six peasants had been beaten to death m his village,' . ■ . '. The town of Istib has been surrounded by troops, artillery has been placed on tho neighbouring heights, mid all communication has been forbidden. The notables'of'the town,' including tho vicar and the Bulgarian Archbishop of uskub, were summoned .before'the committees of disarmament and were beaten. The vicar, after undergoing lurther maltreatment and repeated insults, on tho following day committed suicide. The committee ordered the immediate burial _ of the body without a funeral, service. About 60 persons from the town were seriously injured by flogging, 100 others were also beaten, and tho houses of the Bulgarian Chief Alexandrbff and Ins undo were burned down. The disarmament of the Albanians in tho district of Mbassan is being. carried out with great cruelty. The committee, is about _ to inaugurate operations in the districts of Eadovishta, Kratovo, and Teles,