Armenians Are Sent To Perish In Desert-nyt19150818
ARMENIANS ARE SENT TO PERISH IN DESERT
August 18, 1915
Turks Accused of Plan to Exterminate Whole Population--People of Karahissar Massacred.
Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. London, Wednesday, Aug. 18. - The Daily News has received from Aneurin Williams, M.P., a copy of a letter to from Constantinople, dated July 18, describing the terrible plight of the Armenians in Turkey. The letter says:
"We now know with certainty from a reliable source that the Armenians have been deported in a body from all the towns and villages in Cilicia to the desert regions south of Aleppo. The refugees will have to traverse on foot a distance, requiring marches of from one to two or even more months.
"We learned, besides, that the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death, since they will find neither house, work, nor food in the desert. It is a plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people.
"Courts-martial operate everywhere without cessation. Twelve Armenians were hanged at Caesarea on the charge of having obeyed instructions which they had received from a meeting secretly held at Bucharest by the Trocohak and Hunchak societies. Many have fallen from blows from clubs. Thirteen Armenians were killed in this way at Diarbekr and six at Caesarea. Thirteen others were killed on their way from Chabine-Karahissar to Sivas. The priest of the village of Kurk with their five companions suffer the same fate on the road to Sou-Chehrksivas, although they had their hands bound.
"Hundreds of women and young girls and even children groan in prisons. Churches and convents have been pillaged, defiled, and destroyed. The villages around Van and Bitlis have been pillage and inhabitants put to the sword.
"At the beginning of this month all the inhabitants of Karahissar were pitilessly massacred, with the exception of a few children."