THE TERRIBLE MASSACRE OF CHRISTIANS IN TURKEY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 2817, 2 August 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE TERRIBLE MASSACRE OF CHRISTIANS IN TURKEY.

THE SCENES AT ISATAK RUPEATWO. AccoßDiNfi to a correspondent of Ihe Manchester Guardian at Munich, horrible desiiilsare reaching Germany from Uskub of the massacre of Christian villagers by Arnauts in Old Siberia, It is altogether (says the correspondent) the most frightful episode since Bitak. According to the account given by the Austrian Politische Correspondent (from what is stated as a trustworthy source) a numerous band of Albanians fell on a Christian village, and turned out half the inhabitants, taking possession of their houses. They promised the the evicted villagers safe conduct to the .Servian frontier, giving them an escort to reassure them The Christian Serbs, some 90 in number set out with their Arnaut escort. About four kilometers from the .Serbian frontier they were waylaid by Arnauts in ambush and shot down in heaps. About fifteen were killed and thirtyfive wounded, including three women and three children. No Albanian was touched. The survivors were rubbed of all belongings. The Arnaut escort, which had stood by while over half the Serbs were shot down, joined in the plunder. The Arnauts then set upon the women and girls, who were first outraged in the sight of tbo surviving members of their families, ami then mutilated in horrible ways. OF the remainder of the fugitives only four or five succeeded in rcaehiug the .Serbian frontier; the rust, fell into the hands of the Turkish soldiery, who, instead of interfering with tho Aruauts, drugged tho Serbs olf, together with the wounded and tho mutilated, to the prison at Mitrovilza, where they arc still confined on the pretext that they had tried to emigrate without ollioiil permission. " Such in brief is tho account given (adds the corr;spoudout) ; and I can only say from personal experience of Old Serbia, which I have twice passed through since the Berlin Treaty, that on a small scale horrors of the same kind have beon of continual occurrence during the years since the province was handed back to the Turks by the the diplomatists. In the Ipek district alone 1 was shown a list of ninety Christian villagers who had been murdered separately or in batches by Aruauts. At a village near Ipek a mere boy had been just before my arrival shot down by an Aruaut in pure wantonness in broad daylight, by the fountain. In nearly all those cases the murderers were known, but in no single case were they brought to justice by the Turkish authorities, who will take no repressive measures against these Enropoan Kurds. They wink at the existing reign of terror, as for political purposes they wish to drive the Christian Serb population from the Ivossovo district and to make it a Mohammedan stronghold."