… / Geschiedenis / Berichtgeving in de internationale pers / Reign of Terror in Armenia
The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 september 1915
Bron: National Library of Australia
Reign of Terror in Armenia
9000 WOMEN AND CHILDREN SHOT
We take the following from the Vancouver “Daily Province” of August 4:—
Paris, Aug. 3.— B. Varazadate, a member of the committee of the Armenian Social Democratic party, writing to “L'Humanite,” says the committee has received word that Turks, after massacring all the males of the population in the region of Bitlis, Turkish Armenia, assembled 9000 women and children and drove them to the banks of the Tigris, where they shot them and threw the bodies into the river.
The Armenian population of Cilicia, in the Turkish villayet of Adana, also have been subjected to persecution, according to the reports of the committee. More than 40,000 persons already are dead, and it is feared the Armenians at Moucke and Diarbekeru, in Kurdistan, also have been massacred.
Twenty members of the Armenian Social Democratic party, Varazadate says, have been publicly hanged in Constantinople, after being charged with wishing to found an independent Armenia.
The letter says trees are dying for want of watering and for want of petroleum to spray them. The region has been visited by locusts, and vegetation is ruined. The loss at Jaffa and its vicinity alone is estimated at £6,000,000.
“The Ottoman Government seized every bit of petroleum we had on hand. This was a heavy blow to us,” the letter says. “Most of the men have been drafted into the Turkish fighting ranks, and the women have worked hard to save the crops. Unless something is done, and done quickly, we fear famine and starvation.”
