RUSSIAN POLICE ATROCITIES.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 21 May 1901, Page 4

RUSSIAN POLICE ATROCITIES.

The Slaughter of Students in St. Petersburg.

Alledged Ghastly Cruelty.

London, April 5

Though official reports did not represent the suppression of the unarmed students’ demonstration at St. Petersburg on March 17, as at all important, it has been growing rapidly in horrors since private lectors began to dredge on the censor. Perhaps the most awful of these

appeared in the ‘Daily News’ of Monday. One can only hope that the facts are exaggerated, as, making allowances for foreign extravagances of diction, the the writer seems decidedly neurotic. But even after mentally straightening the the narra’ive a bit it reads badly enough. Here are the cogent parts : The Cossack officer (the Essau) gave orders to use the “nagaikas”, and threw himself first on the crowd, to show an example to his men. With all his might ho hit the nearest student, and the student, after balancing a little, fell to the ground. Following the officers, the sergeant pressed forward, hitting with the whip in the right hand, and seizing with his left the students by the eolar and throwing them under his feet; Then followed the “sotncga”—the men. At first all became quiet, as if no one could believe that totally unarmed men w. re being beaten by nagaikas. A terrible cry broke the stillness. A woman fell in hysterics. The crowd, cut off and surrounded by a detachment of Cossacks, were crying and sobbing, but could do nothing. The nagaikas whizzed, the clubs of tho policemen were knocking on the heads of the students fvho offered no resistance, and generally did not grasp where they were. “But it cannot possibly be,” cried out a colonel in the crowd “it is not the nagaikas, it is the striking of the hoofs against the pavement.” Silently did the crowd give way. and the colonel stood face to face before the scene. Horror-struck, he seized his head in both hands, and ran along the street like mad. In the meantime the students, surrounded on all sides against the entrance of the colonade. retired towards the Kazan Church, where at that time a service was being conducted, and the priest was bringing out the Holy Sacrament. It is there, at the church entrance, between the columns, where there is an inscription, “Come in tho name of our Lord,” that the last part of the most terrible drama was enacted. The nagaikas whizzed and the students were falling to the ground row after row. One could hear the whiz and tbe crash of clubs that were lowered on tho heads. The Cossacks were ordered to retire, and their place was taken up by the policemen. Ido really not know what was better. The Cossacks, it is true were hitting till blood streamed all over their victims, but the policemen knocked them down to death. They knocked them on their faces and heads. One student who had dropped to the ground with his head broken was evidently trodden upon on his throat, and he was writhing and foaming in his death agony. The crowd were seized by a panic, and made a rush to the church. The students became also brutalised, and broke the parapet : “If we are to fight, we shall fight to death.” The instinct of self-defence increased their strength tenfold, and the policemen had io retire. It was fearful to see them, maddened as they wore by the impossibility of warding off the blows of the clubs by anything but bare hands. The hands were just as easily smashed as the skulls, which were being split open by the tremenduous knocks of the policemen. One of the latter, more brutal than the rest, with bloodshot eyes and an enormous club, nearly fell over the lying body of a student. Immediately a medical student flew at him, a fragment of a shaft flashed in the air, and the policeman came down with a crash. ... In the meantime, in the church the policemen were beating to death the unhappy female students who had thought of finding protection with the priests; but the latter, instead of stopping the slaughter with a cross in their hands, locked themselves up in the altar. The policemen were seizing the girls by their hair and knocking their heads against the wall. A number of students broke into the church and tried to free the uuhappy girls. One student of tho Technological Institute, cut off from his comrades by the Cossacks, tried to break through the cordon. Then, seeing a brother of his falling under the club of a policeman with his head split and blood or brains streaming over his face, he went mad on tho spot. It was horrible to see his eyes of a madman ; it was still more horrible to see how in a rage he began biting off pieces of flesh from his hands and throwing them at the Cossacks. All the students who were present at the demonstration were sobbing and crying, while many had hysterical fits. Not a single eyewitness was afterwards able to finish Ins talc for tears.