The American press reported extensively during Seyfo about the atrocities that befell Assyrians and Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Ara Ketibian has devoted the past 19 years to a massive mission: to document what the American press wrote about Christians in the Ottoman Empire during the period 1890–1930. The focus is on the period from 1894, when the Hamidian massacres began, to 1923, the end of the genocide period. However, for some topics, the time span has been broadened. So far, there have been 14 volumes, with more in the works.
The task Ketibian has taken on is to collect this material and make it available to researchers and other interested parties. “The overwhelming majority of what was written is about Armenians,” explains Ketibian, a distinguished gentleman with a warm and gentle gaze whom I had the pleasure to meet in Yerevan, Armenia, adding: “But there is also some that concerns the Assyrians and the Greeks.”
The Armenian material has been divided into several different volumes. For example, there are two volumes that contain only what appeared in the New York Times, as well as two volumes each for the Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor. The Assyrian material has been collected in one volume, number twelve, and covers the period 1894–1923.
“The material is now available digitally,” says Ketibian. “But it is available in various databases, some of which are available free of charge, while others require payment. Then it is a lot of work to find everything and compile it, and not least to make an index.”
Ketibian was born in Lebanon and went to school and was educated in Italy. He has lived and worked in Lebanon, Cyprus and Australia and has now lived in Yerevan, Armenia, for seven years. He does his work with the American media material without the support of large institutions, but with funding from private individuals.
One thing is certain: American newspaper readers knew very well what was going on during Seyfo.
A clear picture of the magnitude of atrocities
What did the American newspapers say about the oppression and later genocide of Assyrians? The picture of widespread lawlessness is clear. Kurds could treat Assyrians and other Christians in any way they wanted without the Ottoman authorities doing anything long before 1915. As early as 1894, it was said several times that Assyrians were in some cases treated as slaves.
What could newspapers far away on the other side of the Atlantic know about what was going on in the Ottoman Empire? Although news reporting more than a hundred years ago was not what it is today, the reporting was based on correspondents sent by news agencies and on letters from missionaries and diplomats on the spot. What we have is therefore eyewitness accounts. And the correspondents acted with a critical attitude; sometimes they could write that there had been rumors of massacres, but when they went to the scene themselves, they could see that this was not true.
In short: we are dealing with both valuable and credible reports about Assyrians and other Christians during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire.
One thing is certain: American newspaper readers knew very well what was going on during Seyfo. Many of the news items contained detailed descriptions of the atrocities that Armenians and Assyrians were subjected to. Thus wrote the Protestant pastor Isaac G. Yohannon in April 1915:
"There were about 40,000 Nestorian Christians living in Urumia district, in the living big and rich villages. All their villages, about 150 in number, have been destroyed, all the houses and churches burned, everything has been pillaged, nothing left to live on, all were driven away from their homes in the deep snow and severe cold, were left without any shelter. More than 2,000 of them have been killed, some shot, some have been crucified and burned alive, some have been skinned alive, some hanged, others their tongues, lips, ears, fingers and hands have been cut off alive, some have been mutilated, and their heads crushed and others have been thrown into wells and pits, and some have been beheaded."
During this time the word “genocide” did not exist, but the reports are very clear that it is a genocide. It is emphasized several times that the purpose of the senseless violence is to exterminate or annihilate the Christian population.
In some years during the period in question, nothing was written about the Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire. The year with the most news is, unsurprisingly, 1915. From 1916 onwards, a significant part of the media reporting is about the American collections for the benefit of Armenian and Assyrian refugees through the organization American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (later Near East Relief).
The American news reporting complements what we know from archival sources and eyewitness accounts: the genocide of Armenians and Assyrians was systematic, planned, and organized. Ara Ketibian is to be highly commended for making this material available to all interested parties.
Ara Ketibian: The Assyrian Genocide. Reports from the U.S. Press (1894-1923). 387 pp. Areg Publishing House. Yerevan 2023.
[Editor's note: a Swedish version of this article first appeared in the Assyrian magazine Huyada.]
