Russian Police Atrocities.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 131, 13 June 1901, Page 4

Russian Police Atrocities.

SLAUGHTER OF STUDENTS. 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 (writes a London correspondent) since private letters began to dodge the censor. Perhaps the most awful of these appeared in the Daily News. One can only hope the facts are exaggerated, as, making allowances for foreign extravagances of diction, the writer seems decidedly neurotic. But even after mentally straightening tho narrative a bit, it reads badly enough. Here are the cogent parts:— The Cossack officer (the Essaul) gave orders to use the “ nagaikas,” and threw himself first on the crowd to show an example to his men. With all his might he hit the nearest student, and the student, after balancing a little, fell to the ground. Following the officer, the sergeant pressed forward, hitting with a . whip in his right hand, and seizing with his left the students by the collar and throwing them under his feet. Then followed the “ sotnega,” the men. At first all became quiet, as if no one could

believe that totally unarmed men were 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, was crying and sobbing, but could do nothing. Tho nagaikas whizzed, the clubs of the policemen were knocking on the heads of the students, who offered no"resistance, and generally did not grasp .wh'ere they were, “ But it cannot possibly be,” cried out a colonel in the crowd; “it is not nagaikas, it is the. striking of the hoofs against the pavement.” Silently did the crowd give away, and the colonel stood face to face before the scene. Horror-struck, ho seized his head in both hands, and ran along the street like one mad. In the meantime the students, surrounded on all sides against the entrance of the colonnade, 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 theie is an inscription, “Come in the name of oi r Laid,” that the last part of the most terrib e drama was enacted. The nagaikas whizzed, and the students were falling to the ground row after row. One could hear the whiz and the crash of the clubs that were lowered on the heads. The Cossacks, it is true, weie hitting till blood streamed all over their, victims, but the policeman 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 was seized by a panic and made a rush to the "church. The students became almost 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 to retire. It was fearful to see them, maddened as tbey-were 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 tremendous 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, insteaed 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 tbe unhappy girls. One student of the 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 oh the spot. It wa3 horrible to see how in a rage he began biting off pieces of flesh from his hands and throwing them to the Cossacks. All the students who were present at tho demonstration were sobbiog and crying; many had hysterical fits. Not a single eyewitness was afterwards able to finish his tale for fears.