The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-06-10
CHRISTIANS ARE IN PERIL,
Another Massacre May Follow
New Orders of the Turk
iSh Sultan.
Mountain Tribes of HISTORIANS to Be
Starved Into Paying
Tribute.

DJULFA, RUSSIA, May THE Turkish
Government, it is claimed, has just taken
the preliminary steps in what may result
in a massacre of HISTORIAN Christians in
the mountains of Kurdistan. tits asserted
that the Government has given orders to
starve the Independent tribes of HISTORIANS
IN the mountain region Immediately west
of Caviar, which may be described as lying
about midway between Mosul and Lake
Van, about fifty miles west of the Persian
frontier. The orders, it is stated, are that
no food supplies of any kind shall be
allowed to enter the territory of the indie
pendent tribes, and measures are said to
have been taken to enforce these orders to
the letter.
This again is apparently taken as a
means of compelling the independent
tribes to submit to the Turkish authorities
and to pay the taxes demanded by the
Government, and is regarded as the first
serious attempt that the Turks have made
TO extort taxes from the independent
tribes. From the earliest times in the his
tory of the Ottoman empire these tribes
have been independent of Turkish rule.
They have paid no taxes and have acknowl-
edged no allegiance to the Turkish Gov
eminent. The present course of the Gov
eminent is taken in some quarters as an
indication that the Sultan has set on foot a
systematic persecution of Christians in all
parts of the empire.
The Sultan has plenty of opportunities
for knowing that the independent Nesto-
rians are too poor to pay taxes, and that
many of them make a living by going
down into the villages of their less wretch
edly poor fellow countrymen and begging.
These poor creatures, according to the
story, are to be starved because they will
not share with the Sultan of Turkey the
scraps of bread, the refuse bits of meat and
the odds and ends which they obtain by
begging. Their homes are in a wilderness
of mountain peaks and narrow rocky val
leys where nothing will grow except tuft
of broomcorn here and there in the crew
ices on the rocks of the mountain sides,
and few stocks of millet in casual
square yard of soil in the valleys.
1t is not difficult to forecast the probable
result of the starvation of this race of beg
CARS should the report turn out to be cor
rect. Driven desperate by hunger, the
people will endeavor to obtain food from
Caviar and other outside districts and
1urhlSQ
troops. The villages will possibly be at
tackled, some of the wretched people will
be killed and no man can prophesy where
the persecution will end.
l have just returned from a rapid Jour
ney to the Kurdish mountains, for the pur-
pose of investigating the report that four
teen villages had been attacked and
devastated by raid of Kurds last week.
The original rumor had it that the Kurds
had massacred many Christians, and had
carried off women and girls to the noun.
tains. After riding day and night to reach
the scene of the raid 1, at length, arrived
at the Merguiver Valley, which lies like
the bottom of boat beneath huge noun.
tains, covered from base to summit with
almost unbroken expanses of snow. II
was in this valley that the raid took place
1t is said band of Kurds from the noun.
tains had indeed raided fourteen villages
in this valley, but the raid was directed
against other Kurds, and not against
Christians. There were few HISTORIAN
Christians living in the valley, but they
were not molested in any way.
As this was not race or religious raid
it will probably excite little interest out
side OF the valley.
Mr.. Palon, the British Consul-General in
Tebriz, Persia, is very much in disfavor
with the gentlemen who are conducting
the Armenian revolutionary movements.
In spite of the fact that Palon has been
collecting evidence of the Sassoun and
Moosh massacre for the use of the British