ARMENIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 September 1915, Page 5

ARMENIA.

THE UNSPEAKABLE TURK. POLICY OF EXTERMINATION. HABBOWWa DETAILS. Received Sept. 27, 6.6 pjn. < , . London, Sept. 05. 4 An awful story of cruelty to the Armenians fe related by an eye-witness in the Daily Ojroaiole. He says that history doeß not record such terrible scenes. Besides many thousands killed, half of the Armenians have been deported. Beginning in last April, the first step \sa9 that of disarming teem, under ■the pretext whereof there were many murders and torturings. Then the .people were imprisoned en masse, and: deportations followed, accompanied by massacres, until scarcely a a man was left.

The Turks in the Kharpufc province marketed the remainder, from the highest functionary to the simplest peasant, and 'bought their wives, forcibly converting tiiem to Bdsmism. The children were put upon the roadfl, and wandered famished until many died of starvation. There were similar scenes in Marbekir province. Some facilities were granted deportees in other provinces, but robbers and peasants looted and stripped the caravans, killed the few remaining youths, abducted the women and girls,, and whipped the old women along the. roads until they dropped from exhaustion and died of hunger. The eye-witness states that women who were "deported from Etzeroum province were left in the Kharpnt plain Woodless, and died at the rate of fifty or sixty daily. A little girl states that when a caravan arrived at the Governor's office at; Sarakichila, children were torn fronttheir mothers' arms, and the caravan was forced to continue wifeout them. As they arrived at each village the women were exposed at the Governor's offices to allow Mussulmans to take their pick. A caravan which started from Papert gradually dwindled, and finally the remaining women and children were thrown into the Euphrates, before Erzinga. Two German Red Cross nurses were so shocked that they resigned and reported the atrocities tothe Constantinople Embassy. The roads in many provinces are littered with,corpses. A Mussulman traveller states that during a nine hours' journey from Malatia to Sivas he encountered only corpses of men and women and Armenian soldiers. The same, fate awaited those at' Eraeroum and Diarbekir, where they were sent to work on. tile roads and then butchered. Eighteen hundred from Kharput were massacred.

Maay Armenians sought to be eonverted to Islamism, to escape their coreligionists' fate. Those at Sivas were notified that they must first surrender their children for education. The arathoritiea at Kharput ordered women desiring conversion that they must first marry a Mussulman. Many threw themselves into the Euphrates with their babies.

■Evidently the Government has determined to end the Armenian question once and for all by extermination.