The Press., 1897-05-06
DACOITS OF BURMA.
THOUGH SOMEWHAT CHANGED THEY
 STILL EXIST TO THUNDER.

Authorities Are Unable to Stop the Thiev-
 Ing and Do Not Often Capture One of
 the Dacoits-A Sample Case of the Inef-
 nciency of the Police Onacers.
 Burma is one of the countries that are changing very fast. and one of the things that have changed in Burma is the dacoit The sportive gentlemen de- soribed by Rudyard Kipling and others who orucified villagers wholesale and filled old ladies with kerosene were hourishing in full vigor less than ten years ago, but they already belong as completely to the past as Dick Turpin and his colleagues in England. No doubt a fresh war or any event seriously shak- ing the British power or reputation might produce 6 recrudescence of the old disease, but in the meantime the daooits have entirely changed their habits. h. stead of living together in bands in the jungle they are scattered through sepa- rate villages in the guise of peaceful cultivators. During the day each man attends to his paddy fields just like his neighbors, and it is only at night that they meet together for the dispatch of their more important and lucrative busi- ness.
 Dacoity as defined by law is simply robbery committed by @ band of five men or more, and it is important only because of the Burman's strong natural propensity toward it and the great difa- oulties which his national character places in the way of his detection. It must always be remembered that, Bur nka much less settled than India and the government being extremely short hand ed, an immense amount of various kinds of work falls upon each single English official. Hence it is wholly impossible for him to exercise any close or detailed supervision over any particular part of his district. This of itself renders the detection of criminals a difficult mat ter. When the dacoits were in the woods, it was simply case of turning out oc- oasionally to hunt them down. At pres ent the matter must necessarily be left chiefly in the hands of natives.
 Now, the natives are for the most part honest and tolerably law abiding, and they have no sympathy whatever with a man who goes dacoiting, but the dacoit goes armed, and the -supineness and cowardice of the Burman in the presence of arms, more particularly of firearms, are something almost incom- prehensible to the western mind. It is quite sufficient for party of half dozen men to have a gun among them-effect- i've or useless, loaded or empty, matters little, the mere show is enough-and they may go fearlessly to work in the midst of crowd. No one will interfere with them. In more than one instance bold robbers have made successful at- tacks when armed merely with their dabs-the dagger which every Burman oarries-and with pretended rife made of a stick, with which they frightened of all opposition.
 But perhaps the strange workings of the native character are best exhibited in the following case, which occurred quite recently. The facts are vouched for by an English officer: There was a band of five men who were in the habit of practicing dacoity occasionally. Three of them came from the same village not a common thing, as it makes deteo- ton easier-the fourth from another village, and, as for the fifth, no man knows whence he came, for reasons that will appear. One night these five men, armed with nothing but their knives and spears, which are used for fishing in lower Burma, entered a house, tied up the owner and began plundering. Now, this house was in large village, containing not only a population of some l, 400, but a police post with 15 native policemen armed with sniders. The alarm was given and the house surrounded, and then there was pause. The robbers continued their work undis- turbed within. The villagers, some 200 or 300 ablebodied men, all more or less armed, sat around on the dam which surrounds and protects every house on the delta, looked down on the house and discussed the question. The police stood rather nearer the house and fired shots into it through the bamboo walls, hurt ing no one.
 One solitary policeman after a time volunteered to advance. He crept up quite close to the house and fired in through an opening in the wall. Then he went farther and actually put his head and part of his body through the hole, apparently to see what execution he had done. One of the robbers prompt ly pinned him to the ground with fish spear and killed him. By this time they had completed their preparations; so they sa1lied forth, each man with his pack of plunder on his back. Though the house was surrounded, they appear to have had no difficulty in making their way through, only the police fired after them with bu ,kshot and hit three of them in the back, not seriously wounding them. But one of the band had the misfortune to stumble and fall. Instantly the crowd rushed upon him, and before he could rise literally hacked him to pieces, and go effectively that not the slightest olew to his identity remained. He was absolutely destroyed. No one knows even what was his na- tionality. The other four got clear away.-Public Opinion.