THE ARMENIAN ATROCITIES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2770, 31 January 1895, Page 3

THE ARMENIAN ATROCITIES.

Twenty refugees from the district of Sasun, in Armenia, from which sensational reports of wholesale massacres and terrible atrocities have recently been received, arrived in Athens on Sunday, 2nd December. Those who came from Dalvorig informed Reuter’s special correspondent at the Greek capital that several women escaped from that place with them, but died near Erzeroum from the effects of sabre wounds inflicted by their oppressors prior to their escape. /Large numbers of Armenians, they asare fleeing from their homes on account of the reign of terror which has set in; but many of the fugitives have been captured by the Turkish troops, and thrown into prison. The refugees declare that for nearly 18 mouths past the province of Sasun has been surrounded by Turkish troops, no person being allowed to enter or leave the district. About four months ago the Turks learned that the inhabitants of a village named Yartemis, Just outside the frontier of Sasun, were sending the necessaries c ", life into the village of Dalvorig, lying within the closely guarded district. For this offence the village was raided by troops, and many of the inhabitants ruthlessly massacred. Similar outrages took place a year ago. One of the refugees, named Khadjik, states that his uncle and aunt were killed, the latter having been previously violated. He declares that an Armenian priest named Kevout was killed for refusing to celebrate Turkish rites in his church at Yartemis. The village contained 325 houses belonging to Armenians; of these only 25 were left standing. When these outrages became known at Dalvorig, which is the largest village in Sasun, the inhabitants attacked the troops on the frontier. The Turks thereupon sent 12 soldiers into Dalvorig to learn what had occurred. The Armenians killed them •11. A body of Turkish troops was then sent into the village with cannon, and a general massacre began. Every house was razed to the ground. Selo Bey, the Bey of Initzonm, and a Kurd belonging to the Kurdish cavalry, went with the soldiers to the village of Semal, and forcibly took the Armenian priest from his church. They defiled the sacred vessels, and, placing them in the priest’s bands, bound him on a donkey, and, •t a distance of a few yards, shot both the priest and the donkey dead, the same village the soldiers

entered an Armenian house, and having outraged a woman and her daughter—the latter a child of 14—killed fhem both. Selo Bey sent eight Armenian girls to his harem at luitzoum. l?he village of Kelichuzen was eutered by Kurdish and regular troops before dawn, and while the people were still peeping was set on lire. A ip aa named Arakiel and his wife, who were found asleep, wore jijrtured in the most revolting manner with red h t irons and killed. A priest named Margos and 20 other persons residing in his house were burned alive, not one escaping. The chief of the yillago—Chmeg was bound, and, with jus two daughters, scalded to death. Inexpressible horrors were perpetrated in ihe village of Sebghant by 25 soldiers belonging to the regular cavalry. They

violated the girls iu the village school, and then destroyed the building. Ibo Bey, a notorious Kurd brigand, belonging to the village of Djibran, and a colonel in the regular army went with troops to the Armenian villages of Bahlou, Hatzgent, and Komk, and there committed outrages of the most abominable description. They drove out the men, and collected the women and children at Bahlou to the number of about 200. After ravishing the women they killed them all, shooting them and cutting them d->wn with swords. They then regaled themselves with wine, and feasted upon the spoils they had collected. Kurdish regulars and from Kizan and Bahran entered the Armenian villages of Aliandzig and Aghpeg, slaughtered the inhabitants, and reduced the houses to ruin. In all 32 villages were destroyed. The refugees, who are fine, stalwart men, have been provided with temporary lodgings in Athens, iu small windowless rooms, where they sleep huddled together iu groups of four or five on the ground. They are absolutely destitute, but are receiving assistance in the form of food and clothing from their fellow-countrymen here, though the latter themselves are extremely poor. The refugees spent 48 hours iu getting to the Piraeus. An Armenian, writing from Constantinople, gives further particulars of the outrages committed on his fellow-countrymen by Turkish troops. According to a despatch in the Daily Chronicle of the 6th December, he puts the number of victims at 6000, and says that pregnant women were ripped open by soldiers, and their unborn babes earned upon spears through the streets. The writer makes a pathetic appeal to British chivalry for help.