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
[For a whole month corpses were observed floating down the River
Euphrates nearly every day, often in batches of from two to six
corpses bound together. The male corpses are in many cases hideously
mutilated (sexual organs cut off, and so on), the female corpses are
ripped open. The Turkish military authority in control of the
Euphrates, the Kaimakam of Djerablous, refuses to allow the burial
of these corpses, on the ground that he finds it impossible to
establish whether they belong to Moslems or to Christians. He adds
that no one has given him any orders on the subject. The corpses
stranded on the bank are devoured by dogs and vultures. To this fact
there are many German eye-witnesses. An employee of the Bagdad
Railway has brought the information that the prisons at Biredjik are
filled regularly every day and emptied every night—into the
Euphrates. Between Diyarbekir and Ourfa a German cavalry captain saw
innumerable corpses lying unburied all along the road.]
<The following telegram was sent to Aleppo from Arabkir:—“We have
accepted the True Religion. Now we are all right.” The inhabitants
of a village near Anderoum went over to Islam and had to hold to it.
At Hadjin six families wanted to become Mohammedans. They received
the verdict: “Nothing under one hundred families will be accepted.”
Aleppo and Ourfa are the assemblage-places for the convoys of
exiles. There were about 5,000 of them in Aleppo during June and
July, while during the whole period from April to July many more
than 50,000 must have passed through the city. The girls were
abducted almost without exception by the soldiers and their Arab
hangers-on. One father, on the verge of despair, besought me to take
with me at least his fifteen-year-old daughter, as he could no
longer protect her from the persecutions inflicted upon her. The
children left behind by the Armenians on their journey are past
counting.
Women whose pains came upon them on the way had to continue their
journey without respite. A woman bore twins in the neighbourhood of
Aintab; next morning she had to go on again. She very soon had to
leave the children under a bush, and a little while after she
collapsed herself. Another, whose pains came upon her during the
march, was compelled to go on at once and fell down dead almost
immediately. There were several more incidents of the same kind
between Marash and Aleppo[27].
The villagers of Shar were permitted to carry all their household
effects with them. On the road they were suddenly told: “An order
has come for us to leave the high road and travel across the
mountains.” Everything—waggons, oxen and belongings—had to be left
behind on the road, and then they went on over the mountains on
foot. This year the heat has been exceptionally severe, and many
women and children naturally succumbed to it even in these early
stages of their journey.
There are about 30,000 exiles of whom we have no news at all, as
they have arrived neither at Aleppo nor at Ourfa.>
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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