The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
History
The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Armenian question; Armenians; World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Refugees
A sad case was that of the mother of a girl of twelve who was being
taken away to a life of slavery. The mother protested and tried to
save her child, who was ruthlessly torn from her. As the daughter
was being dragged away the mother made so much trouble for her
oppressors, and clung to them so tenaciously, that they stabbed her
twelve times before she fell, helpless to save her little girl from
her fate. This woman recovered from her wounds. Some people were
shot as they ran, and children that they were carrying were killed
or wounded with them. In some cases men were lined up so that
several could be shot with one bullet, in order not to waste
ammunition on them.
At the height of the epidemic not less than two thousand were sick.
The mortality reached forty-eight daily, and the fact that four
thousand died, besides the one thousand who were killed, will help
to make vivid the terrible conditions that prevailed in our crowded
premises. All ranks have suffered—preachers, teachers, physicians,
etc., as well as the poor—for all had to live in the same unhygienic
surroundings.
One of the most terrible things that came to the notice of the
Medical Department was the treatment of Syrian women and girls by
the Turks, Kurds and local Mohammedans. After the massacre in the
village of ——, almost all the women and girls were outraged, and two
little girls, aged eight and ten, died in the hands of Moslem
villains. A mother said that not a woman or girl above twelve (and
some younger) in the village of —— escaped violation. This is the
usual report from the villages. One man, who exercised a great deal
of authority in the northern part of the Urmia plain, openly boasted
of having ruined eleven Christian girls, two of them under seven
years of age, and he is now permitted to return to his home in peace
and no questions are asked. Several women from eighty to eighty-five
years old have suffered with the younger women. One woman who was
prominent in the work of the Protestant Church in another village
was captured by eighteen men and taken to a solitary place, where
they had provided for themselves food and drink. She was released
the next day and permitted to drag herself away. Later she came to
the city to accuse her outragers, and practically did not get a
hearing from the Government.
There is little to relieve the blackness of this picture. The
Government gave some assistance in the finding and returning of
Christian girls. A few have been brought back by Kurds. In one case
eleven girls and young women, who had been taken away from Geogtapa,
were sent to me by the chief of the Zarza tribe of Kurds. Several
companies have been sent also by the Begzadi Kurds to Targawar.
Since the return of the Russians to Urmia some of the Kurds have
tried to curry favour by returning prisoners that they have held for
months, but quite a number are still held by them, some of them
women who have been married to some of the principal servants of the
chiefs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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