Armenian Genocide: Armenians hanged from tripods in 1915. Photograph: Lebrecht Music & Arts/Corbis

Archive: The Armenian genocide

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How the Manchester Guardian reported on the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915

The first reference to the Armenian genocide in the Manchester Guardian was on 24 May 1915:

This was followed by a report from L’Humanité:

A French Report
We have received from a trustworthy source terrible news from Armenia. The Turkish Government and the Mussulman population are making the Armenians responsible for the war. Turkish regulars, aided by Kurds, brigands and the dregs of the population, are systematically pursuing a work of ruin and devastation throughout the whole of Armenia. Obligatory requisitions have been succeeded by pillage and merciless murder and violation. All physically incapable men who have not been swept into the nets of the military authorities and all the male children have been killed. All the good-looking women and young girls have been carried off. No one remains in the devastated and ruined villages except old women.

In Constantinople and in all the Armenian centres the Government is arresting all persons of the educated classes, many of the clergy, and almost all the members of the old Armenian revolutionary party. These men have been exiled to Konia. The Young Turk Government is surpassing in cruelty its predecessors. In rage at its impending defeat it is avenging itself on the Christians in Armenia for its moral and political failure.

Two days later, a Guardian editorial noted that the massacres did not come as a surprise: