TURKISH ATROCITIES IN BULGARIA.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 421, 21 October 1876, Page 2

TURKISH ATROCITIES IN BULGARIA.

HORRIBLE SCENE LN BATAK. OUTRAGE, ROASTING ALIVE, AND MASSACRE. (From the Auckland Star.) The following thrilling account of the horrible atrocities of the Turks in Bulgaria, is condensed from the letter of the Special Commissioner of the London Daily News, dated August 2. He shews how anxious the people were at Restera that the true state of affairs should be witnessed by foreigners, diplomatic help being delayed, while hundreds of poor families are starving aud dying. He tells briefly one or two of the harrowing stories which were narrated to him before he started, in a language so nearly resembling Russian, that he says he well understands how the Russians must sympathise with these poor people. “As we ascended, bones, skeletons, and skulls became more frequent, but here they had not been picked so clean, for there were fragments of half-dry, half putrid flesh still clinging to them. At last we came to a kind of little plateau, or shelf in the hill-side, where the ground was nearly level, with the exception of a little indentation where the head of a hollow broke through. We rode towards this with the intention of crossing it, but all suddenly drew rein with an exclamation of horror, for right before us, almost beneath our horses’ feet, was a sight that made us shudder. It was a heap of skulls, intermingled with bones from all parts of the human body, skeletons nearly entire rotting ; clothing, human hair, and putrid flesh lying there in one foul heap, around which the grass was growing luxuriantly. It emitted a sickening odour like that of a dead horse, and it was here that the dogs had been seeking a hasty repast when our untimely approach interrupted them. In the midst of the heap I could distinguish one slight skeleton form still enclosed in a chemise, the skull wrapped about in a coloured handkerchief and the bony ankles encased in the embroidered footless stockings worn by the Bulgarian girls. The ground was strewed with bones in every direction, where the dogs had carried them off to gnaw them at their leisure.

“ At a distance of a hundred yards beneath us lay the town. There was not a roof left, not a whole wall standing ; all was a mass of ruins, from which arose as we listened a low plaintive wail, like the “ keening” of the Irish over their dead, that filled the little valley and gave it voice. We looked again at the heap of skulls and skeletons before us, and observed that they were all small, and that the articles of clothing intermingled with them and lying about were all parts of women’s apparel. These then were all women and girls. From my saddle I counted about a hundred skulls, not including those that were hidden beneath the others in the ghastly heap, nor those that were scattered far and wide through the fields. The skulls were nearly all separated from the rest of the bones, the skeletons were nearly all headless. These women had all been beheaded. We descended into the town. Within the shattered walls of the first house we came to was a woman sitting on a heap of rubbish, rocking herself to and fro, wailing a kind of monotonous chant, half sung, half sobbed, that was not without a wild discordant, melody. In her lap she held a babe, and another child sat beside her patiently and silently, and looked at us as we passed with wondering eyes. She paid no attention to us ; but we bent our ear to hear what she was saying, and our interpreter said it was as follows: “ My home, my home, my poor home, my sweet home ; my husband, my husband, my poor husband, my dear husband; my home, my sweet home,” and so on, repeating the same words over and over a thousand times. In the next house were two engaged in the same way ; one old, the other young, repeating words nearly identical: “ 1 had a home, and now I have none; I had a husband, and now I am a widow ; I had a son, and now I have none ; I had five children, and now I have nonewhile rocking themselves to and fro, beating their heads and wringing their hands. These were women who had escaped from the massacre, and had only just returned for the first time, taking advantage of our visit or that of Mr Baring to do so. As we advanced there were more and more; some sitting on the heaps of stones that, covered the floors of their houses, others walking up and down before their doors, wringing their hands and repeating the same despairing wail. There were few tears in this universal mourning. It was dry, hard, and despairing. As we proceeded most of them fell into line behind us, and they finally formed a procession of four or five hundred peopie, mostly women and children, who followed us about wherever we went with their mournful cries.” The correspondent then describes Batak, and estimates)" the population before the massacre at between 8,000 and 10,000. In this village of Batak not a single' Turk was killed. The Turkish authorities never attempted to justify the massacre on this ground. Achmet Agha, with a party of Bashi-Bazouks, demanded the surrender of the arms ordinarily carried by Christians and Turks alike in this part of the country, and when the arms were given up they massacred the inhabitants, men, women, and children, in cold blood. WOMEN OUTRAGED & MURDERED. “A little further on we came to an object that filled us with pity and horror. It was the skeleton of a young girl not more than fifteen, lying by the roadside, and partly covered with the debris of a fallen wail. It was still clothed in a chemise ; the ankles were enclosed in footless stockings; but the little feet, from which the shoes had been taken, were naked, and, owing to the fact that the flesh had dried instead of decomposing, were nearly perfect. There was a large gash in the skull, to which a mass of rich brown hair nearly a yard long still clung, trailing in the dust. It is to be remarked that all the skeletons of women found here were dressed in a chemise only, and this poor child had evidently been si ripped to her chemise, partly in the search for money aud jewels, partly out of mere brutality, therf Outraged, and afterwards

killed. We have talked with many women who had passed through all pans of the ordeal but the last, aud the procedure seems to have been as follows: — They would seize a woman, strip her carefully to her chemise, laying aside articles of clothing that were valuable with any ornaments or jewels she might have about her. Then as many of them as cared would violate her, and the last man would kill her Dr not as the humor took him.” “ The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often spitted on bayonets, aud we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw little babes carried about the streets, both here aud at Olluk-kui, on the point of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mahometan has killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise, no matter what his sins may be. Mahomet probably intended that only armed men should count, but the ordinary Mussulman takes the precept in its broader acceptation, and counts women and children as well. The advantage of killing children is that it can be done without danger, and that a child counts for as much as an armed man. Here iu Batak the Bashi-Bazouks, iu order to swell the count, ripped open pregnant women, and killed the unborn infants. He describes the heartrending grief of the childless and widowed women. He came to the ruins of a school-house, beneath the stones and ashes of which were the bones and rubbish of two hundred women and children, burnt alive within its walls, In a broad shallow pit close by, Ilk) bodies had been buried, but the dogs had partly unearthed them. The water flowed in, and converted the pit into a horrid cesspool. In a sawmill the wheeipit was choked with dead bodies, and the banks of the stream were strewed with corpses sweltering in the sun, and being eaten bv dogs. The churchyard was neaped up five or sixfeet above the level of the street, but what appeared to be a mass of stones and rubbish, was really an immense heap of human bodies covered with a thin layer of stones. The stench became so horrible that itwasimpossibe to approach the heap. Heads, arms, legs, feet, and hands projected from the heap in horrid confusion. '3OOO people lay in the little churchyard. The correspondent goes on to say “It was a fearful sight—a sight to haunt one through life. There were little curly heads there in that festering mass, crushed down by heavy stones ; little feet not as long as your finger on which the flesh was dried hard by the ardent heat., before it had time to decompose; little baby hands stretched out as if. for help ; babes that had died wondering at the bright gleam of sabres, and the red hands of the fierce eyed men who wielded them ; children who had died shrinking with fright and terror; young girls who had died weeping and sobbing and begging for mercy ; mothers who died trying to shield their little ones with their own weak bodies, all lying there together, festering in one horrid mass. They are silent enough now. There are no tears nor cries, no weeping, no shrieks of terror nor prayers for mercy,” “Of all the cruel, brutal, ferocious things the Turks ever did, the massacre of Batak is among the worst ?Of all the mad, foolish things they ever did, leaving these bodies to lie here rotting for three months unburied, is probably the maddest and most foolish ! But this village was in an isolated, out-of-the way place, difficult of access, and they never thought Europeans would go poking their noses here, so they cynically said," These Christians are not even worth burial, let the dogs eat them.” “ In one family of ten two remained, in another three out of eight, iu another five out of fifteen. One old woman had had three tall handsome sons, all married, and with twelve beautiful children between them, and this poor old grandmotheralone remained. There was one old patriarch who had five sons married, with twenty five children, and only eight remained alive. The wretch, Achmed Agha who commanded the slaughter, had been promoted to the rank ofYuz-bashi, and decorated. The Turks carried off many young girls and boys, and refused to surrender them. The people were homeless, starving, but the fiendish Turks still demanded payment of taxes, and war contributions. It was the comparative wealth of the village of Batak that had excited Turkish capidity.” “ We asked about the skulls and bones we had seen up on the hill upon first arriving in the village where the dogs had barked at us. There, we were told, were the bones of about two hundred young girls, who had first been raptured and Sarticularly reserved fora worse fate than eath. They had been kept till the last ; they had been in the hands of their captors for sever <1 days—for the burning and the pillaging had not all been accomplished in a single day—and during this time they had suffered all it was possible that poor, weak, trembling girls could suffer at the hands of brutal savages. Then, when the town had been pillaged and burnt, when all their friends had been slaughtered, these pooryoung things, whose very wrongs should have insured them safety, whose very outrages should have insured them protection, were taken, in the broad light of day, beneath the smiling canopy of heaven, coolly beheaded, then thrown in a heap there, and left to rot.”