The evening herald. [volume] (Shenandoah, Pa.) 1891-1966, 1895-06-10
A MONSTROUS PROPOSAL
How the Sultan of Turkey Will De-
mand Payment of Taxes.
TO BE STARVED INTO SUBMISSION.

HISTORIAN Christians who Are a Race Of
MendiCants VIII be Deprived of Food by
Soldiers, who VIII Prevent Supplies
from Entering Their Territory.
LONDON June 1O.-The special CORE
spondent of the Associated Press under
date of Djelfa, Prussia, May T. writes as
follows concerning affairs in Armenia:
The Turkish government, 1t is said, has
Just taken the preliminary steps in what
may result in a massacre of HISTORIAN
Christians in the mountains of Kurdistan.
1t is asserted that the government has
given orders to starve the Independent
tribes of HISTORIANS in the mountain re
gion 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 order, it is stated, are that no food
supplies of any kind shall be allowed to
enter the territory of the independent
tribes, and measures are said to have been
taken to enforce these orders to the letter.
This action is apparently taken as a means
OF compelling the independent tribes to
submit to Turkish authority and to pay
the taxes demanded by the Turkish govern
ment, and is regarded as the first serious
attempt that the Turks have made to ex-
tort taxes from the independent tribes.
From the earliest times in the history
OF the Ottoman empire these tribes have
been independent of Turkish rule. They
have paid no taxes and they have acknowl-
edged no allegiance to the Turkish govern
ment All Turkish officials have been ex-
cluded from the territory of the tribes.
and crnt g.. 1T
own lives have let the independent people
alone in their mountain businesses. The
presence of these independents has, ac-
cording to report, always been a thorn in
the side of the Turkish government, but
as it was practically impossible to subdue
the half savage mountaineers by force of
arms, no attempt has been made to discip-
line them.
The present course of the government is
taken, in some quarters, as an indication
that the sultan has set on foot a sys-
tematic persecution of Christians in all
parts of the empire. The fact that the in
dependents pay no taxes is looked upon
by the opponents Of the porte as merely a
plausible excuse for the governments ac-
tion.
But why the sultan should come upon
these half wild people for taxes now, after
an independence since the Babylonian era
is not easily explained. The sultan has
plenty of opportunity for knowing that
the independent HISTORIANS are too poor
to pay taxes, and that many of them make
living By going down into the villages
of their less wretchedly poor fellow coun-
trymen and begging. There is one large
village inhabited entirely by beggars
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.
It is not difficult to forecast the prob
able result of the starvation of this race
of beggars, should the report turn out to
be correct Driven desperate by hunger,
the people will endeavor to obtain food
from Caviar and other outside districts,
and there will be fights with the Turkish
troops, the villages will possibly be at
tackled and some of the wretohed people
will be killed, and no man can prophesy
whore the persecution will end How
ever the whole story may turn out to be
an invention of the enemies of the Turk
ish rule, but think it but right to record
the fact that this startling report is in oir-
culation, and apparently, is believed by
many people to be true
have just returned from rapid jour
ney to the Kurdish mountains for the pur-
pose of investigating the report that four
teen villages had been attacked and de-
vastated by raid of Kurds last week. I
found that a band of Kurds from the
mountains had indeed raided fourteen
villages in this valley, but the raid was di-
rected against other Kurds and not
against Christians,