Part 3

AGHOB KAITANJIAN.--Aghob Kaitanjian was one of the Armenians imprisoned on the charge of being bravoes of the Armenian Society in Diarbekir, and in whose possession explosive material had been found. I often talked to him, and I asked him to tell me his story. He said that one day, whilst he was sitting in his house, a police agent knocked at the door and told him that the Chief of Police wished to see him at his office. He went there, and some of the police asked him about the Armenian Society and its bravoes. He replied that he knew nothing of either societies or bravoes. He was then bastinadoed and tortured in various ways for several days till he despaired of life, preferring death to a continuance of degradation. He had a knife with him, and when they aggravated the torture so that he could endure it no longer, he asked them to let him go to the latrine and on his return he would tell them all he knew about the Armenian matter. With the help of the police he went, and cut the arteries of his wrists ... with the object of committing suicide. The blood gushed out freely; he got to the door of the police-office and there fainted. They poured water on his face and he recovered consciousness; he was brought before the officer and the interrogatory was renewed. ... The Chief of Police was confounded at this proceeding and sent him to the hospital until he was cured. I saw the wounds on his hands, and they were completely healed. This was the story as he told it to me himself. He desired me to publish it in an Armenian newspaper called Haeyrenik (Fatherland), which appears in America, in order that it may be read by his brother Garabet, now in that country, who had been convinced that the Government would leave none of them alive.

I associated freely with the young Armenians who were imprisoned, and we talked much of these acts, the like of which, as happening to a nation such as theirs, have never been heard of, nor recorded in the history of past ages. These youths were sent for trial by the court-martial at Kharpout, and I heard that they arrived there safely and asked permission to embrace the Moslem faith. This was to escape from contemptuous treatment by the Kurds, and not from the fear of death, as their conversion would not save them from the penalty if they were shown to deserve it. Before their departure they asked me what I had heard about them, and whether the authorities purposed to kill them on the way or not. After enquiring about this, and ascertaining that they would not be killed in this way, I informed them accordingly; they were rejoiced, saying that all they desired was to remain alive to see the results of the war. They said that the Armenians deserved the treatment which they had received, as they would never see the necessity for taking precautions against the Turks, believing that the constitutional Turkish Government would never proceed to measures of this kind without valid reason. The Government has perpetrated these deeds although no official, Kurd, Turk, or Moslem, has been killed by an Armenian, and we know not what the weighty reasons may have been which impelled them to so unprecedented a measure. And if the Armenians should not be reproached with a negligence for which they have paid dearly, yet a people who do not take full precautions are liable to be taxed justly with blameworthy carelessness.

MY TRAVELLING-COMPANIONS.--From time to time I visited the men who had been in my company during the journey, but after my release the director of the prison would not permit me to go to them. I used, therefore, to ask for one of them and talk with him outside the prison in which the Armenians were confined. After a while I enquired for them and was told that they had been sent to execution, like others before them, and at this I cried out in dismay. One day I saw a gendarme who had been imprisoned with us for a short time on the charge of having stolen articles from the effects of dead Armenians, and as he knew my companions I asked him about them. He said that he had killed the priest Isaac with his own hand, and that the gendarmes had laid wagers in firing at his clerical headdress. "I made the best shooting, hit the hat and knocked it off his head, finishing him with a second ball." My answer was silence. The man firmly believed that these murders were necessary, the Sultan having so ordered.

THE SALE OF LETTERS.--When the Government first commenced the deportation of the 700 men, the officials were instructed to prepare letters, signed with the names of the former, and to send them to the families of the banished individuals in order to mislead them, as it was feared that the Armenians might take some action which would defeat the plan and divulge the secret to the other Armenians, thus rendering their extermination impracticable. The unhappy families gave large sums to those who brought them letters from their Head. The Government appointed a Kurd, a noted brigand, as officer of the Militia, ordering him to slaughter the Armenians and deliver the letters at their destination. When the Government was secure as to the Armenians, a man was despatched to kill the Kurd, whose name was Aami Hassi, or Hassi Aami.

SLAUGHTER OF THE PROTESTANT, CHALDEAN, AND SYRIAC COMMUNITIES.--The slaughter was general throughout these communities, not a single protestant remaining in Diarbekir. Eighty families of the Syriac Community were exterminated, with a part of the Chaldeans, in Diarbekir, and in its dependencies, none escaped save those in Madiat and Mardin. When latterly orders were given that only Armenians were to be killed, and that those belonging to other communities should not be touched, the Government held their hand from the destruction of the latter.

THE SYRIACS.--But the Syriacs in the province of Madiat were brave men, braver than all the other tribes in these regions. When they heard what had fallen upon their brethren at Diarbekir and the vicinity they assembled, fortified themselves in three villages near Madiat, and made a heroic resistance, showing a courage beyond description. The Government sent against them two companies of regulars, besides a company of gendarmes which had been despatched thither previously; the Kurdish tribes assembled against them, but without result, and thus they protected their lives, honour, and possessions from the tyranny of this oppressive Government. An Imperial Iradeh was issued, granting them pardon, but they placed no reliance on it and did not surrender, for past experience had shown them that this is the most false Government on the face of the earth, taking back to-day what it gave yesterday, and punishing to-day with most cruel penalties him whom it had previously pardoned.

CONVERSATION between a postal contractor from Bitlis and a friend of mine, as we were sitting at a cafe in Diarbekir:

Contractor: I see many Armenians in Diarbekir. How comes it that they are still here?

My Friend: These are not Armenians, but Syriacs and Chaldeans.

Contractor: The Government of Bitlis has not left a single Christian in that Vilayet, nor in the district of Moush. If a doctor told a sick man that the remedy for his disease was the heart of a Christian he would not find one though he searched through the whole Vilayet.

PROTECTION AFFORDED BY KURDS TO ARMENIANS ON PAYMENT.--The Armenians were confined in the main ward of the prison at Diarbekir, and from time to time I visited them. One day, on waking from sleep, I went to see them in their ward and found them collecting rice, flour and moneys. I asked them the reason of this, and they said: "What are we to do? If we do not collect a quantity every week and give it to the Kurds, they insult and beat us, so we give these things to some of them so that they may protect us from the outrages of their fellows." I exclaimed, "There is no power nor might but in God," and went back grieving over their lot.

DESPATCH OF THE ARMENIANS TO THE SLAUGHTER.--This was a most shocking proceeding, appalling in its atrocity. One of the gendarmes in Diarbekir related to me how it was done. He said that, when orders were given for the removal and destruction of a family, an official went to the house, counted the members of the family, and delivered them to the Commandant of Militia or one of the officers of Gendarmerie. Men were posted to keep guard over the house and its occupants during the night until 8 o'clock, thereby giving notice to the wretched family that they must prepare for death. The women shrieked and wailed, anguish and despair showed on the faces of all, and they died even before death came upon them. ... After 8 o'clock waggons arrived and conveyed the families to a place near by, where they were killed by rifle fire, or massacred like sheep with knives, daggers, and axes.

SALE OF ARMENIAN EFFECTS, AND REMOVAL OF CROSSES FROM THE CHURCHES.--After the Armenians had been destroyed, all the furniture of their houses, their linen, effects, and implements of all kinds, as well as all the contents of their shops and storehouses, were collected in the churches or other large buildings. The authorities appointed committees for the sale of these goods, which were disposed of at the lowest price, as might be the case with the effects of those who died a natural death, but with this difference, that the money realised went to the Treasury of the Turkish Government, instead of to the heirs of the deceased.

You might see a carpet, worth thirty pounds, sold for five, a man's costume, worth four pounds, sold for two medjidies, and so on with the rest of the articles, this being especially the case with musical instruments, such as pianos, etc., which had no value at all. All money and valuables were collected by the Commandant of Gendarmerie and the Vali, Reshid Bey, the latter taking them with him when he went to Constantinople, and delivering them to Talaat Bey. ...

The mind is confounded by the reflection that this people of Armenia, this brave race who astonished the world by their courage, resolution, progress and knowledge, who yesterday were the most powerful and most highly cultivated of the Ottoman peoples, have become merely a memory, as though they had never flourished. Their learned books are waste paper, used to wrap up cheese or dates, and I was told that one high official had bought thirty volumes of French literature for 50 piastres. Their schools are closed, after being thronged with pupils. Such is the evil end of the Armenian race: let it be a warning to those peoples who are striving for freedom, and let them understand that freedom is not to be achieved but by the shedding of blood, and that words are the stock-in-trade of the weak alone.

I observed that the crosses had been removed from the lofty steeples of the churches, which are used as storehouses and markets for the keeping and sale of the effects of the dead.

METHODS OF SLAUGHTER.--These were of various kinds. An officer told me that in the Vilayet of Bitlis the authorities collected the Armenians in barns full of straw (or chaff), piling up straw in front of the door and setting it on fire, so that the Armenians inside perished in the smoke. He said that sometimes hundreds were put together in one barn. Other modes of killing were also employed (at Bitlis). He told me, to my deep sorrow, how he had seen a girl hold her lover in her embrace, and so enter the barn to meet her death without a tremor.

At Moush, a part were killed in straw-barns, but the greater number by shooting or stabbing with knives, the Government hiring butchers, who received a Turkish pound each day as wages. A doctor, named Aziz Bey, told me that when he was at Marzifun, in the Vilayet of Sivas, he heard that a caravan of Armenians was being sent to execution. He went to the Kaimakam and said to him: "You know I am a doctor, and there is no difference between doctors and butchers, as doctors are mostly occupied in cutting up mankind. And as the duties of a Kaimakam at this time are also like our own--cutting up human bodies--I beg you to let me see this surgical operation myself." Permission was given, and the doctor went. He found four butchers, each with a long knife; the gendarmes divided the Armenians into parties of ten, and sent them up to the butchers one by one. The butcher told the Armenian to stretch out his neck; he did so, and was slaughtered like a sheep. The doctor was amazed at their steadfastness in presence of death, not saying a word, or showing any sign of fear.

The gendarmes used also to bind the women and children and throw them down from a very lofty eminence, so that they reached the ground shattered to pieces. This place is said to be between Diarbekir and Mardin, and the bones of the slain are there in heaps to this day.

Another informant told me that the Diarbekir authorities had killed the Armenians either by shooting, by the butchers, or at times by putting numbers of them in wells and caves, which were blocked up so that they perished. Also they threw them into the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the bodies caused an epidemic of typhus fever. Two thousand Armenians were slaughtered at a place outside the walls of Diarbekir, between the Castle of Sultan Murad and the Tigris, and at not more than half an hour's distance from the city.

BRUTALITY OF THE GENDARMES AND KURDISH TRIBES.--There is no doubt that what is related as to the proceedings of the gendarmes and the Kurdish tribes actually took place. On receiving a caravan of Armenians the gendarmes searched them one by one, men and women, taking any money they might find, and stripping them of the better portions of their clothing. When they were satisfied that there remained no money, good clothes, or other things of value, they sold the Armenians in thousands to the Kurds, on the stipulation that none should be left alive. The price was in accordance with the number of the party; I was told by a reliable informant of cases where the price had varied between 2,000 and 200 liras.

After purchasing the caravans, the Kurds stripped all the Armenians, men and women, of their clothes, so that they remained entirely naked. They then shot them down, every one, after which they cut open their stomachs to search for money amongst the entrails, also cutting up the clothing, boots, etc., with the same object.

Such were the dealings of the official gendarmerie and the Kurds with their fellow-creatures. The reason of the sale of the parties by the gendarmes was to save themselves trouble, and to obtain delivery of further parties to plunder of their money.

Woe to him who had teeth of gold, or gold-plated. The gendarmes and Kurds used to violently draw out his teeth before arriving at the place of execution, thus inflicting tortures before actual death.

A KURDISH AGHA SLAUGHTERS 50,000 ARMENIANS.--A Kurd told me that the authorities of Kharpout handed over to one of the Kurdish Aghas in that Vilayet, in three batches, more than 50,000 Armenians from Erzeroum, Trebizond, Sivas, and Constantinople, with orders to kill them and to divide with themselves the property which he might take from them. He killed them all and took from them their money and other belongings. He hired 600 mules for the women, to convey them to Urfa, at the rate of three liras a head. After receiving the price, he collected mules belonging to his tribe, mounted the women on them, and brought them to a place between Malatiya and Urfa, where he killed them in the most barbarous way, taking all their money, clothes, and valuables.

THE VIOLATION OF WOMEN BEFORE OR AFTER DEATH.-- ...

INCIDENT OF THE SHEIKH AND THE GIRL.--I said above that the Armenian women were sent off in batches under guard of gendarmes. Whenever they passed by a village the inhabitants would come and choose any they desired, taking them away and giving a small sum to the gendarmes. At one place a Kurd of over 60 picked out a beautiful girl of 16. She refused to have anything to do with him, but said she was ready to embrace Islam and marry a youth of her own age. This the Kurds would not allow, but gave her the choice between death and the Sheikh; she still refused, and was killed.

BARSOUM AGHA.--Whilst I was Kaimakam of the district of Kiakhta, in the Vilayet of Kharpout, I was acquainted with an Armenian Notable of that place, named Barsoum Agha. He was a worthy and courageous man, dealing well with Kurds, Turks, and Armenians, without distinction; he also showed much kindness to officials who were dismissed from their posts in the district. All the Kurdish Aghas thereabouts kept close watch over him, hating him because he was their rival in the supremacy of the place. When, after my banishment, I arrived at Sivrek and heard what had befallen the Armenians, I enquired about him and his family. I was told that when the Government disposed of the Armenians of Kiakhta he was summoned and ordered to produce the records of moneys owing to him (Kurds and Armenians in that district owed him a sum of 10,000 liras); he replied that he had torn up the records and released his debtors from their obligations. He was taken away with the other Armenians, and on arrival at the Euphrates he asked permission to drown himself. This was granted, and he endeavoured to do so, but failed, as he could not master himself. So he said to the gendarmes, "Life is dear and I cannot kill myself, so do as you have been ordered," whereupon one of them shot him and then killed the rest of the family.