ARMENIAN ATROCITIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 January 1917, Page 2

ARMENIAN ATROCITIES.

j. /- ~~ ' j*. j , TERRIBLE REVELATIONS 4 . ) I " 1 Times Service. "* London, Dee. 37. ! The Times publishes the first reports fiom reliable Mohammedan sources of the Armenian atrocities. They are supplied by two Mussulroen eye witnesses of official standing, and of tested veracity. The first eye-witness said in August, ifll;j, in the suburbs of Mush large numbers of dead men, women and children were shot or stabbed, mostly horribly mutilated. A number floated in the river at Ritlis. The smel! was terrible, the water being undrinkable. Five hundred were locked in a stable at Mush, and through an opening in the roof gendarmes threw flaming torches. All were burned alive. Between Hlnis and Keif he saw a ravine filled ,vit)i bodies of little children. Thousands were thrown in the Euphrates. Many suicided, fearing a worse death. The second eye-witness was a member of the court-martial at, Trebizond in July, 1915. which ordered the deportation of a.71 Armenians, to the interior. He knew deportation meant massacre, en route. Men were shot and women and children plundered and outraged, and then murdered by organised bands. At Trebizond children were taken to sea in boats, placed in sacks, and thrown into the sea. The best looking women were picked by Government officials and outraged and murdered. At Ivamask he saw in a prison a Kurdish chieftain, Muza Bey. He said: "I have killed seventy thousand Armenians, I- am now arrested for striking a gendarme." Afterwards he and the secretary were executed. The massacres were ordered as part of the settled Young Turkish policy of extermination, so that none hut 'Turkish races remained in the Ottoman Empire. The motive was political, not religious. He saw no German officers actually engaged in supervising the massacres, but tho German military in. Turkey was aware of them and did not attempt to stop them.