PROTESTANT LEADERS TRANSPORTED IN RUSSIA.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3079, 9 April 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

PROTESTANT LEADERS TRANSPORTED IN RUSSIA.

M. Pobednostnetf, Procurator of tho Russian Holy Synod, is finishing up ;i long career of persecution by terribly drastic measures against his Protestant, fellow-countrymen (at tolegrapha the riflis correspondent of tho Chronicle). His most recent coup wa3 tho arrest a day or two ago of four of tho chief loaders of tho Protestant oc Stundist movement who were still at largo. Those are Bagdasariauz, leader of the Protostant Armenians ; Kalveit, leader of the German Baptists ; Mazayolf, Chief Presbyter of the Russian Molokans ; and Levashoff, leader of tho Methodists. These men have been torn from their families without a word of notice and sent under police esoort, secretly, for a term of five years to some mountain district near the Persian frontier, where their only neighbours will bo fanaticil Mussulmans. In addition to these prominent members of the protesting sects, 110 members of both sexes have beop recently banished to Gerusi, a small village in the province of Elisabothpol. Among these are Baptists, Methodists, Molokans, and Old Believers. I have just learned that they are in the greatest distress, and obliged to beg their daily bread from the Armenians and Tartars around them. The most terrible feature of this persecution is that tho sanctity of family life is deliberately invaded by the Russian authorities. Parents aro torn from children lest their influenco should contaminate their offspring, and among the 110 exiles in Gerusi are not a few whose children have been literally kidnapped aud placed under Orthodox guardians. It is exceedingly difficult to send help to these unfortunate sectaries. Their letters all pass through the bauds of the police, and their friends in Russia fear it to be known that they are sending them the means of life lest they also be suspected, and share the same fate.