MASSACRE AT TEHERAN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9164, 12 August 1908, Page 3

MASSACRE AT TEHERAN.

THE SHAH BOMBARDS HI3 PARLIAMENT. Particulars are to hand of the bom'barding of the Persian Parliament by the Shah. Scenes of the most terrible character took place in Teheran, the capital of the Sriah of Persia, on Tuesday, .June 23rd, says "Lloyd's Waekly," ;i\s the result of his Majesty's efforts to crush the recalcitrant Parliamentary party, who demanded certain reforms and the removal of officials who had been denounced as corrupt .and reactionary. The merciless action of the Shah was his reply to an ultimatum Bent him on Monday by Parliament demanding the removal of certain ■orfijials objected to by the Parliamsntary leaders. The ultimatum was drawn up by the anjumans, pjwerful political clubs that started .a movement to compel the Shah to cjmply with Parliamentary demands ■or to abdicate the throne. A reply wa* demanded in twenty-four hours .and in answer the Shah ordered his Cossack troops to give those sending it a lesson which they should remember.

Accordingly, early on Tuesday morning the Cossacks, under General Liakholf, the Shah's Russian Commander, surrounded the Parliament building, and the Sipahsalar Mosque next to it, which was held by 200 defenders, and commenced a nidrci!es3 bombardment that did not cjase until three o'clock in the afternoon, w'u j n nothing was left of the Pail.ament and mosque but ruined walls. All ■th3 prominent Nationalists, including members of Parliament and mujtaiiids (chief priests), who were not killed were arrested. PILES OF CORPSES. All day long stubborn fighing took ;pla-e in the streets between the Imperial troop 3 and the revolutionaries. Aiter the rebels hid been routed a .sivage massacre of the defenceless pjp.ilation followeJ. The Imperial troius swept everything before them.' A c t>r mowing down crowds of people thrjoging the streets with artillery .just as a reaping machine mows down cor:i, the soldiers forced an entrance to private houses and slaughtereJ mjii, women, and children without discrimination. Numberless acts of barbarous cruelty were perpetrated. Tlie troops mutilated their victims and even tortured them to diath. Sucn was the fata of eighteen lead-jrs of the reform party wno were arrested, doaded with chains, and taken before the Shah. He ordered them to be summarily execute 1, whereupon tha executioners tortured them t > • death with all the refinements of cruelty. At least 80u p3rsonj w ;re killed on tha Parliament ai in side, while the lo3ses of tro>ps wore insignificant. According t> the Teheran correspondent of the Berlin "Lokalanzeiger" the open space in front of the spot where the Parliament buildI ing had stood was literally piled high with corpses of men, women, and horses. A':c )rcli ng to a Wednesday's telegrim of the "Deutsche Cablegram Gesellschaft," seventy OnsacKs were killed or wounded. The same agency states that "the object of tne Shah in bombarding a portion of Teheran was not to rescind the Constitution, but to overpower a group hostile to himself, which wished to depose him. He has aldo overcome his adversariei in the provinces. "The work of Parliament his not been stopped. It is said, inched, that theaction of the Sliati has not been unwelcome to a portion of the Parliament. Danger does not exist ■for Europeans in Teheran, but will do eo in Tabriz and Urmia; in the .lattter from the Turkish Kurds."