§ MR. FRANCIS STEVENSON (Suffolk, Eye)I beg to ask the Under 1326 Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether the attention of the Foreign Office has been called to the examples of torture inflicted in Bitlis prison, a list of which appears in The Daily News of the 14th instant; whether a similar statement has been communicated from authoritative sources to the British Embassy at Constantinople and to the Foreign Office; and what action the Government intend to take with regard to the matter?
§ THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir EDWARD GREY,) Northumberland, BerwickThe statement referred to, which appeared in The Daily News, has not reached Her Majesty's Government. Her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople was instructed in March last to call attention to the reports which were received from various parts of Asia Minor of the ill-treatment to which prisoners were subjected. He will be asked whether he has received any authentic information as to the tortures said to have been inflicted in the prison at Bitlis, and if such should be the case, to represent to the Turkish Government the necessity of a strict investigation.
§ MR. FRANCIS STEVENSONI beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the necessity that the execution of the reforms to be introduced into the Armenian provinces should be under direct, adequate, and continuous European control, he is able either to state the nature of the special provisions by which that object is to be carried out, or to lay the text of the Joint Note upon the Table of the House?
§ SIR E. GREYIt would be undesirable to make a public statement as to the terms of proposals which are now under discussion between the Ambassadors and the Porte.