CHRISTIANS AND MOSLEMS

New Zealand Tablet, 2 September 1909, Page 8

CHRISTIANS AND MOSLEMS

AN ACCOUNT OF THE MASSACRES AT ADANA

The appalling nature of the -disaster which has overtaken the Christian communities at Adana is only gradually becoming known to Catholics in this- country. The London Tablet of July 24 publishes the following narrative, which is partly taken from The Universe' and partly from private correspondence. It will be remembered that the first massacre took place on April 14-16. The Avar cry of the Moslems was: 'Selavat Mahmoud, askna giaour asknaP (In the name of Mahomet cut the infidels, cut them). This is an account' of an eye-witness : 'The unfortunate Armenians . were surrounded, -seized, and tortured. The Moslems cut off the fingers of their right hands and forced the right eye from its socket with the point of a dagger. They slashed their ears, t severed their necks as far as the carotid without touching it, then beat them "with cudgels. These were stout sticks armed with a head of jagged lead, set thick with. nails.* Two Turks held the victims' head and gave the time — one, two, three! and another struck the blows,' methodically, with skilled deliberation all round the skull, fifteen or twenty

strokes which fell thick and ringing like a hammer upon an anvil. When the victim fell dead they cut open his stomach. After the men they passed on to the women. They stripped them, cut off the nipples of their breasts, which they forced the children to chew, cut off their toes, plucked out their eyes and thrust them into two holes made in the breast. . ' In a farm they surprised a whole family, Burdikian by name, husband and wife, two boys, and a little girl of- six. The wife, aged 28, flung herself- at their feet crying for pity. They smiled and answered: .*' We'll give you pity, , we'll give you pity, you'll see." ' They then bound the husband to the foot of a bed, seized the woman, stripped her naked, and with three large large nails pinned her to the wall, one nail for each hand and one for the feet. With the point of a scimitar Qiey tatooed upon her breast one of the Christian symbols. Mad with terror -she was silent, and' stared with starting, eyes while they brought her husband before her into the middle of the room. They, stripped him, enveloped him in petroleum, then set fire to him. The body caught and crackled merrily. . The hair blazed like, a torch. The flesh charred and fell off before the 'victim died. . . The persecutors danced and sang Christian hymns around the" human bonfire. The children wept in a corner. The woman looked" on from the height of her wall. ' They next mutilated her breasts and forced the children to suck the bleeding flesh. They tore off her nails, cut off her fingers and nose and set fire to her hair.. At last under her anguished eyes they sawed off the heads of the boys, plucked out' their liver and heart and thrust them into the mother's mouth, shouting:- "Holy Virgin Mary, save them. Come, come down ! Do you not see that they are dying? It is their heart, you know, that you are eating — the heart of your dear boys whom you loved so much." ' . . . They dispatched her by blows jvith a hatchet.' Another eye-witness gives the following account of the scenes of the next day: — - ' . . . Scarcely had we left the" church when the firing burst out violent and rapid quite close to us. Then terror gripped us, wild unreasoning terror 'which made us fly might and main in the opposite direction. We plunged through the first open door we found in our way. It was that of the "French Jesuit Fathers' House, where already nearly 7000 Armenians had taken refuge. The Fathers from the beginning of the massacre had not hesitated for an instant. Defying the terrible danger which surrounded them both as Christians and as receivers of Christians, they had thrown their house wide open and had not even waited for the fugitives to knock at their doors. Three thousand more refugees were with the Sisters [Josephine Nuns of Lyons] in a house a little further away. The Fathers were in terrible distress, for they made sure that if their own house could stand a siege, that of the Sisters was at the mercy of the least assault. So much so that at last Father Sabatier, S. J.j decided without more ado to start, to go to the house of the nuns. He put on an old cyclist's cap, tucked up his soutane to his waist, said good-bye to Father lligal, and sallied forth. He arrived, but with a bullet in his right side, in time, however, to be able to see that, after a bloody and violent fusillade,' the Turks were beginning to fire the houses roiind the Sisters convent, and that the flames were already lickinjg it with their devouring tongues. ' The refugees, weeping and trembling, assembled. Tha twenty-five Sisters and two Fathers ■ formed round them a living rampart with their bodies. Thus this crowd of men and women, protected by twenty-five women praying, traversed the short distance which separated the house of tha Fathers from that of the Sisters. The crossing took an hour, during which they had to stop fifteen times under the fire, which had become more destructive still. The body of refugees, compact at the start, strayed in the streets, leaving at every corner stragglers and remnants. Their guides had to run forward, come back, form them in column again, and start afresh. ' Some fell from time, to time with a low moan, struck down by a bullet, and the people'who followed trampled upon the body and scattered. Along the road lay the corpses shot through the head and breast, grim finger-posts of the line of marjsh. ' At 6 o'clock exactly the fire from the minarets ceased, and the Sisters entered the Father's residence with all their refugees save nine, who lay on the pavement with eyes open, arms outstretched, and face to the sky.' We have before us another letter from a Marist Brother, who describes what he then saw in the streets of Adana. They were lined with corpses and hideous fragments of a most incredible butchery. The details' supplied to us by the Marist Brother are- of a nature which could scarcely , allow of their transcription in these pages. Two days later, Father Rigal gives the following account of the state of the sufferers and of the scene of desolation": . „ . ,-, ,-. '■, 'There is no one m the town. Even those whose houses have not been burnt have camped out in the open beyond, some on the land belonging to the German factory, the rest near the tobacco factory. The latter are supported by the British Consul (at Mersina), who is devoting his private means to the work and raising funds in England for the same object. The unfortunates receive about half a pound of bread per day, and a little lard or butter. The

Consul has had shelters erected in the open, and thus the greater number are sure .of a roof during the- night. During the day time they lie out in the suu huddled together near the tents. * - ' ' ' Those near the German factory — by far the larger number — are much worse off. They have scarcely any shelter, and there is a great shortage, of food. I wandered through this- vast space and fifty times put the same question: " How" do you manage to live?" 1 and received oil all sides the same answer: " Yesterday we were given" half a pound of bread. The distribution before that was three days ago*" They are all in charge of the Government and of the^mana-' gers of the German factory.' If my information is correct, they are about to turn them out of the factory enclosure for fear of contagious disease and to make them camp, out in the sun. And what a sun 1 At Adana it is stifling.! Meanwhile, Fathers, and nuns succeeded* in .hiring a house which they converted at once into a hospital, but a hospital without furniture,- linen or drugs. Thus one "of the nuns writes : ' Thirty children on an average die every day from smallpox, feyer, or hunger. Numbers of the wounded suffer agonies for want of proper care. . . But we have nothing, absolutely, nothing.' Fortunately, however, a measure of relief, , hopelessly, inadequate, but better than none, was* soon at hand. From Beyrut. linen, supplies and medical comforts were forwarded, and the assistance of qualified medical men' secured. The French Consul General at "Beyrut formed at his Government's expense an ambulance service for Adana. The British^ Consul and his wife from Mersina have taken up their residence in the desolate town, and are doing, all in their power to alleviate the terrible .distress.