ARMENIAN ATROCITIES

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2966, 2 January 1917, Page 5

ARMENIAN ATROCITIES

; REPORTS BY EYE-WITNESSES (Rec. January; 1, ,7.4o'p:in.)' ■ London, December 31. "The Times" publishes the first reports, from reliable / Mohammedan sources', of'the Armenian atrocities, supplied by two Mulsulman eye-wit-nesses of official standing and tested yeracity. , ■ The first eye-witness saw, in August, 1915, in the; suburbs of Mush, large numbers of dead ,irien, women, and , children, shot or stabbed,-and mostly horribly mutilated. Numbers floated down the river to Bitli&;"the smell was terriblo and the water undrinkable. Five hundred were locked in a stable near Mush, and through an opening in .the roof gendarmes threw .flaming torches, and all were burned alive. Between Hinis and Keiu he saw a ravine filled with the bodies of .little children. Thousands were thrown into the Euphrates. Many Armenians committed suicide, fearing.a worse death. The second eye-witness was a member of a court-martial at Trebizond in July, 1915* which ordered the deportation of all Armenians to the interior. Ife knew deportation meant massacre en route. Men were shot and women and children plundered, outraged, and murdered by organised bands. At ■ Trebizond children were taken in sea boats, placed in sacks, and thrown into the sea. The best-looking women were picked by Government officials and ontraged and murdere3. At Kamash he saw in prison the Kurdish chieftain Murza Bey. He said: "I have killed seventy thousand Armenians, and,now I am arrested for striking a gendarme." He was afterwards secretly executed. ■ , _~ Massacres were ordered as part of the settled Young Turkish • policy of exterminating the non-Turkish, races of the Ottoman Empire. The motive was political, not religious. He saw no German officers actually engaged in supervising the massacres,, but the German military in Turkey were- aware- of them, and had not attempted to stop them.—"The Times."