Mexico weekly ledger., 1895-04-04
Terrible Turkish TOrtureS.
THE REPORT OF THE MURDER
OF THE ARMENIANS BY
THE SULTAN.
The Turkish Troops Were Told to
Spare No 0ne-Men Buried Alive
Eyes Gouged Out and Flesh
Torn With Pincers.

man, who made a personal investiga-
ton on the spot. This report was
written in January, but arrived in
London only yesterday. The writer
says that he is convinced that both i'll
1898 and 1894 the Turkish Government
gave both oral and written orders to
the Kurds to attack the Armenians,
promising them the booty and reliev-
ing them of responsibility for the con-
sequences. In the first attack made
upon them the Armenians defeated
the Kurds. Undoubtedly, but for
Turkish help, the Kurds would have
been unable to have gained a perma-
nent victory. The Kurds in the earlier
children. Even when melted by the
Turks they did little, i'll comparison
with the latter.
The account proceeds to confirm
the pitiful incidents and the Govern
ment reading at Djellogoozen of the
Sultan's order to the Kurds to destroy
the disatfected villages, sparing moth
ing, for their Sultan and prophet.
s'This occurred about the middle of
August" he says, "and the massacres
which followed beggar all description.
The Occidentals of the Nineteenth
Century cannot comprehend it. Youths
were bound, covered with brushwood
and burned alive. Others were hack
ed to pieces. At Shenig, a house fill
ed with so men, m and children,
was set on fire and all were cremated.
The officers forced their men to acts
of cruelty from which the latter
shrank. A young priest at Dalvorig
persuaded 20 of his followers to yield.
They yer ordered to dig a trench,
and, when enough dirt had been
thrown up, all were hacked to pieces
and cast into the trench. Priests suf-.
fered horrible deaths. One was thrown
into the air and allowed to fall on a
number of bayonets that had been
stuck upright in the ground.
Commenting editorially upon this
report, the Times admits that, owing
to the obstacles Turkey has thrown in
the way, the report, from which the
most revolving details have been ex-
cluded, lacks the qualities demanded
by the scientists and historians, "but
when Turkey has had the benefit of
every consideration that research,
crippled by her action, allows us to
conceive, the indictment goes unan-
swered and assails the entire system
of Turkish rule"
A correspondent investigating the
circumstances of the atrocities perpe-
trated upon Armenia recently tele-
graphed another version of the story
concerning the death pit at Djellyeg-
oozan. He said that the refugees on
Mount Andok were inveigled back to
the village by the assurance that the
authorities desired the re-establish-
ment of peace in the district. Hearing
this Priest Ohannes went with about
800 persons to the camp, where they
we're well received. They were asked
to remain a few hours in camp. Mean
while soldiers were busily digging a
pit behind the house of a village Elder,
a man named Redo. About 6 o'clock
in the evening Priest Ohannes was
taken and the cross and the gospel
were flung at his feet and he vas or
dered by the Turkish officer to trample
on them. He refused, and the officer
ordered the soldiers to gouge ont his
eyes. Then they gave him a pocket
handkerchief and commanded him to
dance. Next Armenians were distrib-
uted among the soldiers and killed
with bayonets and flung into the pit,
dead and dying. The only two Armen-
ians of the party who escaped were a
merchant named Avak and Pia Chan
Zoyran, the latter getting away after
he had received IL bayonet wounds.
The correspondent attached great
Importance to the statements of a
Kurdish soldier, "who killed many in
nocent ONE and children in Sas-
SCUM, "and who subsequently fled, even
his hardened soul revolving at the ter
rible
The correspondent took this mans
deposition before respectable nom
partisan witnesses and from this depo-
sition he telepraphed the following
blood-curdling extracts, which are
taken from his report as published
in the English newspapers:
''The Turkish soldiers took little
children by the feet and dashed them
against stones. / saw and talked with
an Armenian priest, who asserted
that the soldiers tortured him, squeez-
ing his neck, gouging out his eyes and
tearing of his flesh with pincers.
The sightless sockets of this mans
eyes bore pathetic testimony TO his
story.
"He said to me: Il saw q Turkish
Sergeant bind IN old Armenian, head
downward, to two or three branches
and slowly cut through with an AK.
Armenians who implored protection
and surrendered were butchered at
night. l saw it done. The soldiers
stood in double lines of three on each
side. The Armenians were marched
in, their hands tied, and they were
then bayoneted and flung into the pit.
Not all were dead who were in the pit.
/ saw the soldiers take a woman and
stand around her, joking and making
bets as to the sex of her unborn child.
She was then butchered and the mon
ey was paid to the scoundrel who had
guessed rightly"
The correspondent t~elegraphed the
details of the revolving deed, but, al
though he had been a trusted repre-
sentative for many years, the paper
at first suppressed the story, believing
it to be impossible. Later it was pub
lished with explanatory notes.
The correspondent quotes the Kur-
dish deserter as follows:
s'The Kurds killed people with bu-
lets and daggers, but the soldiers de-
lighted in torture. They put some to
death with scissors, severing the veins
In the neck Others were sawed, sew
eral had their tongues cut out; the
eyesof others were gouged out and
their fingers were cut off, in some
cases, before death. / saw men and