8000 SERBIAN YOUNG GIRLS

Taihape Daily Times, 14 November 1917, Page 7

8000 SERBIAN YOUNG GIRLS

SENT TO HAREMS. M. PASHITCH'S NARRATIVE OP BULGAE ATROCITIES. The numberless atrocities committed by Bulgaria and Turkey on poor, defenceless Serbia have reached the culminating point in the deportation of thousands of young Serbian girls from 10 to 14 years of age to Turkish harems. M. Pashitch, the Premier, of Serbia, made the following statement to the "Weekly Dispatch. "My unhappy country has suffered the croAvning indignity which can afflict an invaded nation. The Bulgarians and Turks, not content with desolating unfortunate Serbia, are now carrying off our young women, the future mothers of our race, to a fate which the Christian world —and particularly England will regard with nothing but horror. "Since February 1916 between 8,000 and 10,000 young Serbian girls, between the ages of 10 and 14, have been deported from the simple villages where they lived. They have been sent to Bulgaria, to Constantinople, some even as far as Asia Minor, I am perfectly certain that these children have gone to Turkish harems, although no word has come from them. Prisoners whom we have taken on the iSalonica front openly tell their captors that the traffic in our girlhood nas grown to be a byword in Bulgaria and Turkey. "I have also received confirmatory evidence from a schoolmaster living in one of the villages occupied by the enemy. "The young girls are kidnapped and taken away secretly until at the present time dozens of villages and small towns have been quite denuded of the young female population.

"I do not think the Turks are the actual instigators of this gross violation of all the canons of civilisation. All my information points to the fact that the Bulgarian —for whom no atrocity is too terrible —are the prime movers in this outrage on the defenceless children of Serbia. Under any circumstances the fact that these young girls are passed through Bulgaria is in itself indisputable testimony to the culpability of the infamous Bulgar. "I will leave it to the imagination ■of English (nieta and Avomen (as to what fate these girls children are be-

ing cosigned. They are too young to be of any use for labouring purposes; besides, which neither Bulgaria nor Turkey is in any way short of men, and in Turkey particularly the use of young women for outdoor work is practically unknown. They have gone, I fear only too strongly, to the harems of wealthy Turks. "It is extremely difficult for me to take any effective steps to bring about the repatriation of these unhappy children. Our affairs in Constantinople and Sofia arc' now conducted by the Netherlands Government. To them I am making representations to have these girls sent back—to a place beyond the war zone if possible. Perhaps it will be too late to save them from the horrors of the harem, in which case we can only wait in patience until the time for peace-making comes. It is to the great English race, whose chivalry nations of the world from total decomplete assurance that justice will be exacted for this crowning infamy."