BULGARIAN ATROCITIES.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1616, 25 April 1879, Page 4

BULGARIAN ATROCITIES.

[“Pall Mall Gazette.”] Tim Blue-book or correspondence upon Turk" h affaire which was issued last Saturday Cf esh in liter for the consideration of r. f- d the statements attested . . mission as Incredible. In 1 Henry Luyard, under ,iit September, ext rants . n’t of Mr Buckle, staffii the Sea of Marmora, ■.in .-'jclioly account of the . Iman population in .. A. cry village wo passed.,” s ,j. ■—.;en Adrianople and i* a /. ve or less destroyed, and all ti *.l. biv i wrecked.” The Bulgarian ; m the extreme,” and try to -m. • . r ..tuong the Turks to prevent 1 :n..:g to their lands.” “ i’he Turi .retaken for the vilest purposes, and . men made to work for nothing, thrasbfd or shot, and no appeals ore listened to. The atrociM*6 being committed on the unfortunate Mussulmans in this district are worse than those which startled Europe two years ago.” Then follows a report from ActingConsul Calvert, in which he states that on paying his first official visit to the Russian Governor he brought under General Lapinsky’s notice certain outrages committed upon Mussulmans at Sary Dauishmend. When the Governor returned this visit some days later he said that inquiries made on the spot had established the fact that outrages had been committed. “I then inquired,” says Mr Calvert, “ whether steps had been taken for the arrest of the guilty parties, several of whom had been identified by the victims. The tenor of his Excellency’s rejoinder could only confirm—if confirmation were necessary —the impression, or rather conviction, which has been forced on me—namely, that the p.issive attitude of the Russian authorities towards offences committed by Bulgarians against the Mussulman population is not attributable to negligence or inefficiency, but adopted systematically and of set purpose, in obedience, no doubt, to superior orders. . . The Christiana take the law into their own hands, and visit the Turkish community at largo with present and indiscriminate bloodshed, rapine, and pillage.” And again:— “ Since the Russian occupation it ie hardly too much to say that the Bulgarians in the rural districts’ outrage at their will Turkish girls and women by the score.” Later on Mr Calvert mentions the fact of the Bulgarians of Kirk-Kilissa having taken to compelling the Mussulmans to carry them about the streets on their backs,” a practice to which the “Daily News” referred the other day (the riders and the ridden being in that case of course transposed) as particularly illustrative of “Turkish” humor. On the whole, the facta detailed in these reports appear fully to sustain Mr Calvert’s conclusion, that the evil state of things now prevailing in these districts is “of an incomparably more widespread, harsh, and barbarous type” than that which it has replaced, the chief distinction between the two being that “ where instances of robbery and assassiration of individual Christians occurred under Turkish rule whole Mussulman villages are now liable to that treatment.” All this, however, is of course only the report of a British consul; and wo know from experience how all such officials are treated by a certain party in England whenever they report the wrong kind of atrocity. We shall be quite prepared to hear that Mr Calvert is no more to be trusted when he relates facts of this kind than Mr Fawcett or Mr Holmes.