TORTURE ISLAND

Hokitika Guardian, 3 August 1926, Page 4

TORTURE ISLAND

MOSQUITO DEATH FOR SOVIET • VICTIMS. Many terrible hooks have conic out of Russia of recent years, giving experiences of life under the Bolsheviks, but it is doubtful whether anything quite so terrible, as this account, by an escaped prisoner, of the infamous Bof.slievik prisons on the Solovetsky Islands, in the White Sea, lias yet beenpublished. The forerunners of these prisons were others near Archangel, where ghastly things were enacted. “The assistant commandant of theKholmogorv camp, a Pole named Kvit-i sinsky. was particularly ferocious. This] executioner lias on his con-; science the horrors’of the so-called “White House,” in the neighbourhood ‘ of Kliolmogory. The “White House”; was an estate abandoned by its own-' ers, containing a wjii.te-painied building. Here for two years (1520-22),; shootings took place daily at the direction of Kvitsinsky. “The terrible reputation of the ‘White House’ was doubled by the fact-that the bodies or those executed were not taken away. At the end of 1922 all the rooms of the ‘White House’ wero filled with corpses right up to the ceiling. Two thousand sailors from kri'/ustiiclt were shot there in two days. The smell of the decomposed bodies | poisoned the air for miles round. I " a MOCK AMNESTY. Or.cc- in. tire hands of the Bolshevikshope may just as yvell he abandoned.' “Every year n,;t this time (the date of the Bolshevik Revolution) the Vtsik thus controverting ‘the malignant | lies of the international bourgeoisie and the shameless emigres’ about the I cruelty of the Soviet power—publishes a wide amnesty to ‘all enemies of the ' ruling prdelliriat.’ The presidents of the provincial and district branches of I the Gpn (the present term for the ‘ Tcheka) by way of carrying out the directions of tbei humane \tsik, shoot I half their prisoners before the ani-i-e-sty and send the rest of the cons ecutration camps, to which the terms of the amnesty decree state that it is not extended.” ° The description of the prisoners’ life ° in the Solovetsky Islands is revolting * in the extreme. Torture is inflicted ’ 5 freely.

“ ‘To the Mosquitoes!’ is a form of punishment very popular with the

Solovetsky Tchekists. The manner of its infliction is as follows: The prisoner is stripped naked and made to stand on a particular stone opposite the conn'd induiit-’s office. He- is ordered, with threats of ‘stone sacks’ (another form of torture) and shooting

to stand absolutely still, net to move a finger and not to drive away the: mosquitoes which cover the poor wretch’s body as with a- thick black crust. Tlio torture is continued for several hours. "When the punishment is over the victim’s body is one huge; sore from the bites of the poisonous insects. The weaker prisoners die, and the stronger cannot sit or lie down for may weeks after tlio punishment.”