The Armenian Crisis in Turkey: The Massacre of 1894, Its Antecedents and Significance, With a Consideration of Some of the Factors Which Enter Into the Solution of This Phase of the Eastern QuestionGreene, Frederick Davis
History
The Armenian Crisis in Turkey: The Massacre of 1894, Its Antecedents and Significance, With a Consideration of Some of the Factors Which Enter Into the Solution of This Phase of the Eastern Question
Greene, Frederick Davis
Armenian massacres, 1894-1896; Armenian question
Men, women, and children were most barbarously slaughtered—unnamable
outrages were perpetrated on all. The less horrible outrages were some
of the following: bayoneting the men, and in this wounded condition
either burying or burning them; outraging women and then dispatching
them with bayonets or swords; ripping up pregnant women; impaling
infants and children on the bayonet, or dispatching them with the sword;
houses fired, and the inmates driven back into the flames.
The unspeakable horror of those three weeks must have sent many a one
crazy. The story is told that one soldier found a comely infant and took
compassion on it and wished to save it. The mother was found in a crowd
of poor, wretched women, but she was raving, calling for her children.
She did not recognize the child, and nothing was left to the soldier but
to dispatch it.
No. 11.
[Efforts to block the Commission and put the country in shape for
inspection by emptying prisons of innocent people.]
B..., Dec. 29, 1894.
The Bitlis Governor asks for a cordon on Moosh, as there is cholera
reported there. So the Consular Commission is delayed. The Turkish
Commission is at Moosh now. Only, the president of it was recalled. In
the meantime Sassoun refugees are scattered over the country, begging.
Their stories, together with the stories of the soldiers, confirm the
most horrible of the reports of cruelty.
In all this, remember that the same thing has been going on on a lesser
scale all over the country.
Two weeks ago thirty-six men were dismissed from B... prison after three
years three months’ detention. A little over three years ago three
Armenians were most barbarously murdered in the Narman district, north
of this city and near the Russian boundary. Some Turks were called up
for examination, and all were dismissed. Later, three Turks were
murdered and mutilated, apparently in retaliation. The able-bodied
men—sixty-two in number—of two villages were thrown into prison. Some of
them were condemned to death, some to life imprisonment, and others to
various terms of imprisonment. A number of them died—fifteen, I think—in
prison. Thirty-six were released the other day, and eleven are still in
prison. They have suffered horribly during these three years. In what
condition will they find their homes when those who are released return?
It is almost certain that none of them knew anything about the murder or
had any hand in it. It is said that the murderer is well known, and is
in Russia. This case is a Sassoun atrocity on a smaller scale.
For God’s sake do not let the public conscience go to sleep again over
this reign of terror. The land is almost paralyzed with horror and
terror!
No. 12.
[The crisis and the need of keeping the issue clear. The real
explanation of the massacre.]
A..., Jan. 7, 1895.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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