The Cairo Bulletin

Victims at Hands of Ruthless Oppressor-Many Forced to Commit Suicide.

St. Petersburg, March 28.-An insane prison governor in Siberia is making life an inferno to the political prisoners under his control. Their almost incredible sufferings are described in a letter from a condemned soldier, which has reached here:

"For some time past", he writes, "the life of the convicts has been almost unbearable. The arrival of a new governor at the prison has been celebrated by all the convicts being put in irons. We have been deprived of the privileges of making purchases of tea, sugar and tobacco. This means that we have no nourishment over and above the prison diet, and we are almost dying of hunger.

"But this is nothing to the punishments that the convicts have to suffer. For a trivial breach of the prison regulations we are sent to the cells. In each dark, unheated cell there are from seven to ten convicts. Most of them are ill and they receive no medical attention. These invalids who are fortunate to be in hospital are kept in irons. And the punishment of the lash is becoming more and more generally used.

Deprived of Clothes.

"The men who were confined in cell No. 8, deprived of their clothes, refused to march with the others to their work, so M--, the director of the prison, sent for a file of troops and ordered them to be taken forcibly. Two of the convicts were killed and eight seriously injured in the struggle that followed. Those who survived the scrimmage received 110 lashes each; but this was not considered sufficient and the rest of the convicts, who had nothing whatever to do with the affair, received a hundred lashes each. Furthermore, the thongs used were steeped in salt, and salt was rubbed into the open wounds.

"Finally the convicts of cell No. 8 and several others-forty of them altogether-were tried by court martial and thirteen of them were sentenced to death and thirteen more to penal servitude for life.

"Since this occurred there has been no limit to the mad brutality of the governor. The lighting of a cigarette has become an offense that only fifty lashes can punish fitly. The immediate result of all this has been an epidemic of suicide. Of the convicts who recently arrived at ---- and who found it impossible to bear this insane ferocity, six killed themselves. Then, as a means of dealing with this epidemic, it was decreed that the friends of suicides should receive the lash. Seven more have followed these six, and these things still go on".