Читать книгу The Armenian Crisis in Turkey - Frederick Davis Greene - Страница 17

Even if one were able to visit the district, it would be impossible to get more than an approximate estimate of the number of victims, for many were thrown into trenches, which the rain had washed out, and were covered with earth. Where no such trenches existed the bodies were piled up with alternate layers of wood, saturated with kerosene, and set on fire. But it seems certain that the villages of the whole district were wiped out. A Kourdish chief coming late with his men, and finding that there was nothing left for him to do, went off on his own hook and got all the plunder he could from the village of Maineeg, near Havodorick.

A soldier while in quarantine said he had killed five persons, and he had killed less than anybody else. Another confided to one that he had killed a hundred. A soldier got angry while trading with an Armenian the other day in the Bitlis market, and shouted out that they had slain a thousand thousand, and would turn to those in the city next.

It seems safe to say that forty villages were totally destroyed, and it is probable that sixteen thousand at least were killed. The lowest estimate is ten thousand, and many put it much higher. This is allowing for more fugitives than it seems possible can have escaped.

To cap the climax, the Governor-General, through imprisonment and intimidation of various kinds, has forced the chief men in all the province (the city of Bitlis alone excepted), to seal an address of gratitude to the Sultan, that the Governor has restored order in the vilayet!!