The Balkans.
Hussein, Hilmi Pasha, GovernorGeneral of the Macedonian vilayets, assured af interviewer representing the London “Times” that the Porte considered the Albanian question settled. Only a small, ignorant faction, he declared, were concerned in the revolt, and the twenty thousand troops now massed round Mitrovitza were able to overawe the malcontents.* He hoped to show within three months that the proposed reforms were in progress. Foreign diplomats consider Hilmi Pasha is too optimistic. They hold that the only solution of the trouble will be .the complete disarmament and' military occupation of Albania.
Well authenticated reports state that murders, pillage, incendiarism and atrocities of every description occur daily in the Balkan provinces, committed alike by soldiers, Albanians, Turks and Bulgarians. Authenticated reports have been received of the destruction by Bulgarians of an exclusively Mussulman Village. A hundred and sijJty-five persons were massacred in cold blood.
Among Other horrors pregnant women were disembowelled, and one woman was impaled. The “ Neae Freie Presse” says that Russia demands £4BOO as compensation fox' the murder of M. Stcherbina, Russian Consul at Mitrovittfa, the despatch of twenty thousand Anatolian troops to Old Servia to permanently repress the Albanians and the ■ erection of a chapel on the scene of M. Stcherbina’s murder. Ibrahim, who killed M. Stcherbina during the recent attack on that town, has been sentenced to death. [The Sultan the other day informed M. Zinouieft, Russian Minister at Constantinople, that Ibrahim had been sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment, but the Russian Minister demanded that .Ibrahim should be either executed or acquitted ] , With a view to uniting to resist reforms, the Albanians have declared a truce -• regarding inter-tribal squabbles. THE BULGARIAN REVOLUTIONISTS A traitor has, informed a European Consul at Salonica of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Committee’s methods. He stated that the inhabitants of Macedonia are compelled, under pain of death, to accept the committee’s bonds, repayable after Macedonia has been liberated from Turkish rule
The informant alleged that women carried revolutionary correspondence across the frontier ; also that a hundred and eighty Bulgarian officers, disguised as pilgrims, are now operating in Macedonia. He declares that a hundred and twenty thousand rifles and large quantities of cartridges, bombs and dynamite have been imported under the guise of holy relics, the Customs officer conniving at their importation. It is expected that a rebellion will begin at the Greek Easter holidays, when railway bridges and tunnels will be dynamited, accompanied by wholesale incendiarism and a carnival of massacre and pillage. THE MACEDONIAN INSURRECTION ABANDONED. The Macedonian Internal Organisation has decided to abandon a general insurrection for 1903 owing to Turkey’s overwhelming military strength and the improbability of securing outside aid, and to confine its operations to guerilla warfare.
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Manawatu Herald, 18 April 1903, Page 2
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449The Balkans. Manawatu Herald, 18 April 1903, Page 2
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