The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published Every Tuesday, Thursday, AND Saturday Morning. Thursday, April 17, 1890. HORRORS OF SIBERIA.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 442, 17 April 1890, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published Every Tuesday, Thursday, AND Saturday Morning .

Thursday, April 17, 1890. HORRORS OF SIBERIA.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’s! at be thy oountry’Sf Thy God’s, and truth’s.

From the nature of tbe information to hand by the mail there is little cause to feel surprised at the recent outcry raised in England and elsewhere against the outrages in Siberia. It is no new thing to learn that prisoners are brutally treated at Siberia, but even in the long history of this brutality there are at times revelations of so horrible a nature as to be sickening to the reader. A writer in the Northern Messenger has been describing the prisoners of the Lena district, a halting place for convicts on their way to Siberia, and the pictures drawn of the sufferings of these outcasts are most harrowing and gruesome. One picture is that of a hundred men being crammed into a dark cell in which forty persons could with difficulty be accommodated, the atmosphere being so poisonous in some cells that the prisoners were compelled to sleep with the door open, letting in the bitterly cold frosty air, which sent the mercury of a Fahrenheit thermometer 20 degrees below zero. The writer goes on to tell of weak women and children on that frightful journey in the depth of a Siberian winter, their only food, in tbe most favored cases, being black bread, and not nearly sufficient of that. In other cases the prisoners receive neither food nor money for the distance of several hundred miles, and the only means they have of keeping life together is to depend on the sorely-tried charity of the impoverished peasant. M. Ptitsin, the writer of the paper contributed to the Messenger, goes on to speak of ricketty wooden prisons through which the Arctic wind blows as through muslin, and into the wooden walls of which the prisoners, for the edification of M. Ptitsin, plunged their fingers as easily as into soft snow or molten butter ; of rooms sodden with unnameable filth and ordure, sick persons of both sexes lying helplessly on the cold, putrescent floor, so close together than an apple, if it fell, would not reach the ground, crying, moaning, complaining of the cold. Worst of all, he describes bright, little children, the smile of innocence on their lips, lying uncared for in a corner of the cell set apart for syphilitic women, “just like puppies or kittens of the tortures of the so-lcalled “ naked people " —Convicts who, unable any longer to endure the pangs of hunger, sell their clothes, buy food with the proceeds, and perform a journey of hundreds of miles in their linen, sure to be soundly flogged if they arrive alive. A considerable portion of every batch of convicts is composed of “ naked people " whom the peasant-carriers cover with straw, horse-cloths, or. whatever is handy, and hurry them off to the next station, no matter how ill they may be, apprehensive lest they should succumb in the district for which they are responsible. There are many halting-places unprovided with prisons, where the peasants are obliged to take in the convicts for the night. This would seem a welcome change from the cold hospitality of a regular prison ; but it has terrible drawbacks. 'The convicts complain, says M. Ptitsin, that while the peasants are deliberating and squabbling about the billetting of the batch of prisoners, the latter have to stand—some covered only with their linen and a piece of tarpaulin—for half a day in the open air, hungry, weary, and perishing of cold, the thermometer often registering 36 degrees below zero (Fahr.) What wonder can there be at the indignation aroused by these scenes ? To us in New Zealand it seems almost impossible that such things can still be at the latter end of the nineteenth century!’ But the sad truth remains, and much worse may yet be told. The Times gives an account of thirty prisoners who were being conveyed to Siberia. They had been convicted of no crime, but simply arrested according! tn the usual practice, suspected of soiflsa politicaloffimee.

Among the prisoners were women and young girls, and the Governor having altered the regulations usual in such cases, the females were thus compelled to make the journey without proper clothes or food over tracks rendered almost impassable by the melting snow. So the exiles petitioned for a reversion to the usual regulations, which at best were very brutal. They went to the office of the Administration, but were told that was too much like a political demonstration, and they were directed to meet at a neighboring house, hopes of a favorable answer being held out. Shortly afterwards a subaltern officer went and commanded the exiles to follow him to the Administration. They explained that they had just been ordered to do the contrary. This was taken as a refusal to comply with the order, and the house was immediately surrounded by soldiers. The prisoners were again given the order, the soldiers in the meantime having forced their way into the building, and while the prisoners were in the act of putting on their overcoats the soldiers sprang upon them with their bayonets and the butt end of their guns. Then shots were fired again and again. At this stage the Commander of the Garrison, terrified at the slaughter, drew his sword and tried to make them cease firing, but the Governor, at this moment perceiving one exile, fired at him twice with his revolver and wounded him, and at this example the soldiers renewed the energy of their firing. A court-martial which subsequently followed resulted in three more of the exiles being condemned to death. Unhappily there is too much proof to allow one to hope that this case may have been an isolated one. It is no worse than hundreds of other cases of inhumanity which can be proved against the Russian officials. There is little reason to wonder that a mere fraction of the number of those sent to Siberia ever reach their destination, when so many of the convicts are frozen to death, cut down by want, swept away by disease, or their blood shed through the cruelty of officials.