TOO LENIENT!

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1101, 13 April 1911, Page 5

TOO LENIENT!

RUSSIAN PRISON METHODS. Bj Telesraph—l'rcss Association—Copyright St. Petersburg, April 11. The committee of the Council of Empire has presented a report favouring more rigorous dietary and disciplinary treatment of prisoners. The present daily cost of feeding prisoners is a penny to threo halfpence a day each. Meat is not provided, except on holidays. The St. Petersburg newspaper "Reitch" describes hoiv ten prisoners cut open their stomachs, as a protest against the present rigorous treatment. HORRORS OF THE RUSSIAN GAOLS. ' WHOLESALE EXILE. This report is remarkable in view of the criticisms of the brutality of Russian prison methods which have been appearing both in Russia, and abroad ot late. The Paris newspapers last year declared that the horrors oi the system were more flagrant than ever. "The reign of white terror, now in full sway in Russia, has filled all the prisons to overflowing. Some of the worse sufferers are those, condemned to hard labour and detanied in that awful Bastile, the Schlussclburg Prison." Of the political prisoners now incarcerated there, only a trilling fraction receive the food sent them by friends outside to allay the pangs of their constant starvation. The places of exile are not less crowded than the prison of St. Peter and St. Paul, in which Tchaykovsky lived on daily rations of two pounds of black bread; a mug of warm water, and the vilest gruel. The Social Democrats in the present. Duma, observes tho London "Post," are doing excellent service when they draw the attention of Prime Minister Stolypin to the flagrant infringement of the law in this and other prisons throughout the Russian Empire. The, flagellation of convicts on the bare back is forbidden by Imperial manifesto and by order of the Minister of the Interior, yet it continues. "Accounts, the truth of which, unhappily, there is no reason to doubt, arc constantly coming from various parts of the country of dark deeds perpetrated in the prisons." A committee from the Duma undertook recently to extract from Mr Stolypin an explanation of the systematic maltreatment of prisoners of all ages and both sexes. That statesman listens to all protests with his unfailing politeness. The floggings are unabated. The incessant procession of exiles to Siberia, never longer or more numerous than now, as tho Paris "Autorite" complains, is not made up of Terrorists. "They are untried nrisoners, torn from thcir'families at the" whim of reactionary provincial governors, frequently on the mere suspicion of unorthodox political opinions. ,. Out of the thirty ■ thousand sent into exile within a year, only three thousand or less had ever been brought before a Court. Roughly speaking, about twenty thousand exiles are annually sent to Siberia without the shadow of a trial. "These men are not even political prisoners. They are being destroyed for their bpinions." The tremendous scale on which tho suffering is inflicted is without a precedent, the Paris "Humanite" says, in even the worst days of the first Nicholas. i It was stated in the Russian Duma last year that the Metekhsky Castle, which has accommodation for three hundred prisoners, now holds, it is said, a thousand at least. For a year past typhoid has raged within the walls. Political prisoners- and common criminals ' are aliko chained. "The horror of incarceration is aggravated by the fact that a prisoner may be shot down at any moment." Tho, poisoned air of one thronged fortress forces the hapless inmates to crowd to any available window for a whiff of air. The governor thereupon ordered tho sentries to shoot at any "head visible to them through the bars. Nor did this exhaust the tale of prison horrors. Speakers revealed nameless outrages perpetrated upon female prisoners w:ho strove to • destroy conditions irorso to them- 'than. , ' , death itself. These"women have no idea at all of the reason for their incarceration.