Читать книгу The Armenian Crisis in Turkey - Frederick Davis Greene - Страница 22

[Efforts to block the Commission and put the country in shape for inspection by emptying prisons of innocent people.]

B..., Dec. 29, 1894.

The Bitlis Governor asks for a cordon on Moosh, as there is cholera reported there. So the Consular Commission is delayed. The Turkish Commission is at Moosh now. Only, the president of it was recalled. In the meantime Sassoun refugees are scattered over the country, begging. Their stories, together with the stories of the soldiers, confirm the most horrible of the reports of cruelty.

In all this, remember that the same thing has been going on on a lesser scale all over the country.

Two weeks ago thirty-six men were dismissed from B... prison after three years three months’ detention. A little over three years ago three Armenians were most barbarously murdered in the Narman district, north of this city and near the Russian boundary. Some Turks were called up for examination, and all were dismissed. Later, three Turks were murdered and mutilated, apparently in retaliation. The able-bodied men—sixty-two in number—of two villages were thrown into prison. Some of them were condemned to death, some to life imprisonment, and others to various terms of imprisonment. A number of them died—fifteen, I think—in prison. Thirty-six were released the other day, and eleven are still in prison. They have suffered horribly during these three years. In what condition will they find their homes when those who are released return? It is almost certain that none of them knew anything about the murder or had any hand in it. It is said that the murderer is well known, and is in Russia. This case is a Sassoun atrocity on a smaller scale.

For God’s sake do not let the public conscience go to sleep again over this reign of terror. The land is almost paralyzed with horror and terror!