Armenia and Her People; or, The Story of Armenia by an ArmenianFilian, George H.
History
Armenia and Her People; or, The Story of Armenia by an Armenian
Filian, George H.
Armenia; Armenian question
Dr. Dillon is an Englishman who was the special correspondent of the
London "Daily Telegraph," a most accurate and conscientious reporter,
who writes as an eye-witness:
"If a detailed description were possible of the horrors which our
exclusive attention to our own mistaken interests let loose upon
Turkish Armenians, there is not a man within the kingdom of Great
Britain whose heart-strings would not be touched and thrilled by
the gruesome stories of which it would be composed.
"During all those seventeen years, written law, traditional custom,
the fundamental maxims of human and divine justice were suspended
in favor of a Mohammedan saturnalia. The Christians, by whose
toil and thrift the empire was held together, were despoiled,
beggared, chained, beaten, and banished or butchered. First
their movable wealth was seized, then their landed property
was confiscated, next the absolute necessaries of life were
wrested from them, and finally honor, liberty, and life were
taken with as little ado as if these Christian men and women
were wasps or mosquitoes. Thousands of Armenians were thrown
into prison by governors like Tahsin Pasha and Bahri Pasha, and
tortured and terrorized till they delivered up the savings of a
lifetime, and the support of the helpless families, to ruffianly
parasites. Whole villages were attacked in broad daylight by
the Imperial Kurdish cavalry without pretext or warning, the
male inhabitants turned adrift or killed, and their wives and
daughters transformed into instruments to glut the foul lusts
of these bestial murderers. In a few years the provinces were
decimated, Aloghkerd, for instance, being almost entirely 'purged'
of Armenians. Over 20,000 woe-stricken wretches, once healthy
and well-to-do, fled to Russia or Persia in rags and misery,
deformed, diseased, or dying; on the way they were seized over
and over again by the soldiers of the Sultan, who deprived them
of the little money they possessed, nay, of the clothes they were
wearing, outraged the married women in the presence of their sons
and daughters, deflowered the tender girls before the eyes of
their mothers and brothers, and then drove them over the frontier
to starve and die. Those who remained for a time behind were no
better off. Kurdish brigands lifted the last cows and goats of the
peasants, carried away their carpets and their valuables, raped
their daughters and dishonored their wives. Turkish tax-gatherers
followed these, gleaning what the brigands had left, and, lest
anything should escape their avarice, bound the men, flogged
them till their bodies were a bloody, mangled mass, cicatrized
the wounds with red-hot ramrods, plucked out their beards hair by
hair, tore the flesh from their limbs with pincers, and often, even
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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