Punishments in the East.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 187, 15 January 1887, Page 2

Punishments in the East.

The usual punishments in Oriental countries are the bastinado, lines, maiming, imprisonment in irons (the chain-gang), imprisonment, simple confinement, death. The bastinado is dispensed on the soles of bare feet. Unless by the Sultan or Shah's express order, it is not in these times often carried so far as to cause death. The ordinary application of the bastinado means very much what we would call a " good hiding," and nothing more. In the eyes of Eastern peoples there is nothing to lower them in having " eaten stick." The bastin ado is, as a rule, given to all small offenders who are not fined by order of tho cadi ; juet as our metropolitan police magistrates give a prisoner a month's hard labour without the alternative of a forty-shilling fine. Thoße who join in any way in a plot with the criminals are usually bastinadoed till they confess all they know. Where lesser j criminals are concerned, who have not done anything very heinous, they are light'y bastinadood, receiving fifty or a hundred strokes, and allowed to go away. Tho sticks used in Turkey are usually heavy staves ; in other countries I bin rattan canes, ending in a fine tapering point. The beat proof of tho value of bastinadoing may be gathered from what a Persian poldier once said when asked his choice of having either this punishment or losing a month's pay equivalent to 7? Gd of our money—" Why, tho beating of courae !" When ordinary criminals are given thoir choice qb to their punishment they, too, almost invariably profer th 9 bastinado. It does not really cause them so much pain as a Europoan would imagine. From the fact that the lower classes in the East always go about everywhere barefooted, their feet befoino, us it were, ease- hardened. To <* j European, of courpe, this punishment would |be very awful. As many ac two thousand sticks have been broken over tho feet of a criminal — that would moan upwards of six thousand blows. Yet tho man lived and thrived after it. Finos vary in the East according to the position of the offender. Simple imprisonment is usually reserved for burglars or those who owe money ; imprisonment in irons is the lot of thofie who commit act* of violence. Maimine is carriod out ordinarily only on professional thiovos. The method or inflicting this punishment is generally by cutting off tho joint of a linger for the first offenco, and tho hand for the second. Sometimes a man is laved by taking away a part of his Achilesi tendon. Blinding is scarcely ever reported to. Oc(\a°ionally tho ears are cut off, the criminal in this, as in other canes, b( ing t.iken through tho largo crowd of gazors in the bazaar to the place of execution. Surgical amputations in the East aro objected to by tho authori'io* becauso of the loss of ca^te which attached to those who are judicially mutilated. The -mil pie punishment of death is tho special privilege of murderer^;, as well as tho-te guilty of high tnv.son, or even highway robbery It is inflicted in moat cu&es by simply cutting the throat of tho wretched prisoner, much in the way that a butcher slaughters an ox. In oa^cs where men of high rank have been brought in guilty of crimes of violence, the sentence of the law is carried out, as a rule, by poisoning or strangling. There are, of course, exceptional punibhrnont3 in the Ea a t, notably i hat ot being blown from tho carrion*- mmth or tr m a mortar, Mr crucifixion Tlion, again, there is burning alive and buiying elivu. For women, the capital pnuuhmont employer! is usually strangling, 01 bcin^r lumped upon when wi.ipoed up in «* ..a. put. Condemned women are alt-o liable I<> bo thrown down from precipices, or drowned in a well or running stream One man in Pur-nrt three yofrs ago wont through the valley of the shadow of death twice when l» i d out for oxeeutiun. lie wa« taken to be blown from i\ gun aftor seeing a fellow culprit put to death in this way The executioner*! preparfd to lash him to •"he mu7/le of tho piece ; bm in consequence of his being of short st.tturo, stones hud to be fetched for him to ttind on. Thon all being arranged the order was given to fiio. But tho L'un did nut go ofl. If was di" covered th it the artillerymen in then huny had forgotten to load it with powdor. Bu ■ilthough urgent requests were made to the Governor, ho n fu^ed under any circumstances to spare tho wan, uho wad temporarily unbound while they loaded tho gun, and then finally blown away. Such aio -<omo of the terrors which ciimmals in the H"ast have to go through. Crucifixion is rnnied out usually against. a wall. Tho unfortunato culprits often do not die at oncw ; indeed, thoy sometimes linger for several hours or cveu a dd\ . On» man was nor long ago executed in tint? \\c.\ for having si ilen <-ome ariiclo of value be longing *o the Governor His crime was* considered a° equivalent to high treason. A largo gmg of highway robbers in Persia were buried alivo in ISS2 by being walled up inside brick pillars. ftven burning to death i?, at tho present day, resorted to sometimes. At Teheran, the Shad now adays does not appear in person when I an execution takes place, though it was the custom, up to his time, for the Shad (or governor in other cities) to pre°ide at all executions. All criminals condemned to death are, as a rule, kept in prison, with their doom hanging over them, from day to day, till every farthing has been got from them, as well as from their friends, and from overybody belc ging to them. After all this prolongation of agony they are finally executed. Great criminals are now and again executed in prison, and their bodies thrown out into tho public streots or squares. In cases where this is not done they are paid to have died a natural death !—"! — " London Evening News."