Episode 52 A Week of Horror

On the night of March 2, the police system in Batavia was in action, and trucks were speeding through the streets.

Most of the police officers involved in the arrest were Dutch, supplemented by a small number of temporarily recruited Chinese police, and none of the local police were useful. Armed with pistols, batons, handcuffs, and ropes, they broke down the door, cuffed them, and then dragged them out and stuffed them onto trucks. If you run away, shoot and shoot you. The whole operation was under the close supervision of the Ming army, and the Ming army piled sandbags and set up heavy machine guns at every intersection, and there were loaded Ming soldiers patrolling every street, and there was at least one submachine gun in each group of patrolling Ming troops.

In the streets and alleys, Chinese policemen held loudspeakers and shouted in Chinese and Malay: Batavia is under martial law, and in order to cooperate with the police in carrying out their official duties, everyone must stay at home and not go out on the streets. If you violate the ban and go out on the street without permission, you will be arrested together.

In fact, this ban is applied differently to Chinese and locals. Locals are forbidden to go out on the streets, and they must be tied up and stuffed into trucks. And the Chinese are generally persuaded to go home. If the Chinese were in a real emergency, such as going to the hospital, they would be escorted by the gendarmerie.

For a time, Batavia was plunged into a "white terror".

In the silence of the night, only the sound of trucks speeding through the street can be heard from time to time. Often the truck came to a sudden stop, and then there was a chaotic sound of footsteps in the street, followed by the sound of a house being broken into, accompanied by a shout, a woman and a child's cry, a man's yell, a blunt beating, and finally a mass of things thrown onto the truck, the engine starting, speeding away, and the street returning to silence.

From time to time, one or two gunshots rang out in the streets, accompanied by screams. It was someone who tried to escape and was killed on the spot.

Every local aboriginal was so frightened that they didn't dare to sleep all night, for fear that their own door would be smashed next.

More than 500 people were arrested on the first night. These 500 people are the best to arrest, they are the most "showy" people in the two riots, and they are all leaders of large and small mob gangs, and when they attack Chinese people from house to house, loot shops, and gang rape women, they make the most trouble, and their appearance is remembered by many people. Moreover, most of these people are usually ruffians, scoundrels and bullies, whether they are Chinese or locals, they can tell who they are on which street they are when they open their mouths, and they don't need to check at all, they can directly come to the door to arrest people.

Once the first batch of people are caught, the rest will be easy.

In the next few days, every police station in Batavia was tortured in cells, interrogation rooms, and even courtyards, extorting confessions, and setting up prisons.

It is not so easy to recruit more than 3,000 people from these 500 people. On average, six people are recruited for one person. When the locals were caught, they all knew that it was impossible to get out alive, and they were very uncooperative during the interrogation, and it always took some means to get them to speak; Second, it is really difficult for one person to accurately recall so many people. At that time, there was chaos in the riots, many locals did not know each other, they all improvised together to commit violence, often after looting and burning and killing a Chinese family, they scattered with their belongings, and then went to find their own targets.

But it doesn't matter, Xiang Xiaoqiang doesn't require him to be as accurate as he usually solves the case, the main thing is to catch three or four thousand people to pay for his life, almost enough. The specific operation is still the classic old method of Xingda Prison in ancient times: if one person is caught, he is tortured to extract a confession, and he is asked to confess two, and then the two people are arrested, and then they are asked to confess four, and then those four are arrested, and they are asked to confess eight...... If you do it like this, don't say 3,000, 30,000 people can be caught.

Compared with the Nazi occupation forces' frequent random arrest of locals to resist their lives, the benefits of this move by the Ming occupation forces are too great. First of all, from the beginning to the end, the occupation forces did not directly intervene, and the local police did everything from the arrest to the killing. Secondly, this is not a massacre, but law enforcement agencies are solving the case, and everyone arrested has credentials, and there are "testimonies" with other people's fingerprints. Although it is a forced confession, it is also a witness testimony, and it is still used to arrest people.

Within a few days, there were a few things in demand in Batavia: peppers, benches, cowhide, bamboo toothpicks, tongs, charcoal, and iron pots. Chinese shops dealing in groceries all come into these things in large quantities, and people from the police station come to buy them every day, and they buy a lot of them. Many Chinese almost recouped their losses before they could get the compensation.

In the Batavia police station, many offices have been vacated and converted into interrogation rooms.

In an interrogation room, five local men were hung naked, next to two local policemen, one with his sleeves rolled up and whipped his own countryman, while the other squatted on the ground and used a knife to cut a cowhide and make a whip. Cut one off and soak it in a basin of water.

Among the people who were hanged, three were silent, and two were still screaming.

Seeing that the five people who were hanging were already peeled open, the executioner wiped the sweat from his head, threw the whip in his hand into the basin, and said to his companion:

"It's your turn."

Then sit down tiredly, grab a glass of water and drink.

Another policeman stood up, fished out another water-soaked cowhide whip from a basin of water, and with a gloomy face, walked up to a hanging man and asked:

"Do you remember?"

After waiting for two seconds, without saying a word, he directly whipped down. The soaking whip was most effective, and heart-rending screams rang out in the interrogation room.

……

In another interrogation room, a local man was tied to a tiger chair with three bricks already under his heels. This guy was seen by several people, and once led a group of people to ransack Chinese homes several times, and participated in at least three gang rapes. This guy is dead, but now he wants a list of the brothers who followed him. This person's bones are still relatively hard, and he has the style of "if you want to kill or chop you, we won't betray our brother".

Two policemen were dealing with him alone. One cop was boiling chili water on a stove, and another broke his mouth, inserted a leather pipe into it, and turned on the faucet.

The guy was immediately choked and squirted water from his nose, and he struggled. The policeman turned off the faucet and shouted:

"To say or not to say? To say or not to say? ”

After waiting two seconds, I turned on the faucet again. After pouring it for a while, he pulled out the leather tube and began to press on his stomach. With each press, water squirted from his mouth and nose. After being tortured like this for a while, the policeman got impatient and shouted:

"Is the chili water ready? Serve with chili water! ”

Pinching his nose, a large jar of boiling chili water poured into it. The thug choked so much that his eyes were about to pop out, and his nose, trachea, esophagus, and stomach were all in sharp pain that was heart-rending, and finally let out a howl like killing a pig:

"Okay, okay, I said—I said—"

……

The third interrogation room was even more terrifying, and the smell of burnt paste permeated the door. From time to time, there were heart-rending screams, as well as the sound of a soldering iron.

In the fourth interrogation room, in addition to screams, someone would send a bamboo toothpick into it from time to time, and then take out a blood-stained bamboo toothpick. Every once in a while, a stupefied native would be dragged out of it, his hands and fingers blurred with flesh and blood.

In the space of a few days, under Xiang Xiaoqiang's guidance, the police station in Batavia has become a terrifying "devil's cave", which has made the locals talk about tigers. Every day, locals are arrested, and many tortured to death are brought out.

After a few days, the local police officers who carried out the interrogation were about to break down. Many people went to the Dutch boss to complain, but without exception, they were scolded by the Dutch boss.

"What else do you have to complain about? Yes? Do you want to be like them? It's almost time coming, look at how many people you've just arrested! Don't you know who that Xiang Xiaoqiang is? When the time comes, I will be unlucky, and you will be even more unlucky! When the time comes, it's not them who will lie inside screaming, but you! Get back to work!! ”

……

Thus, by the end of the week on March 9, Batavia's cells were filled with 4,025 locals still alive.

The Dutch police chief in Batavia wiped the sweat from his head and stood tremblingly in front of Xiang Xiaoqiang's desk, looking at the emperor behind the desk.

Xiang Xiaoqiang flipped through the file, said "um" a few times, and smiled with satisfaction:

"That's it! Isn't your police station quite competent! You are such a competent police chief. ”

The police chief forced a laugh twice, then rang the bell to Xiao Qiang, called in a People's Guard officer, and asked him to take someone to follow the police chief to check.

After verification, the number was not bad, and it was true that each of the perpetrators had their fingerprints on their confessions.

"Good!" Xiang Xiaoqiang paced with satisfaction and said with a smile, "I said that the upper limit is 4000, and now that we have caught 4025, we can't talk and don't count." Therefore, I will pardon 25 of them. ”

As a result, 25 of the most seriously injured locals were singled out. These people are dying of torture and have not survived for more than a few days. Following Xiang Xiaoqiang's order, these people were sent home.

That night, Xiang Xiaoqiang summoned several of his henchmen, the People's Guards, and held a "Wanhu Conference" behind closed doors to discuss the way to "finally settle" the 4,000 people.