In the above pages a very few instances were given, which could be multiplied by the hundred, if the time and space would permit, but there is no need. For neither did the Turks nor their friends deny them. Moreover, some of the instances of cruelty and outrage are too painful to be put in print.
The attention of the reader may now be directed to the condition of the so-called “agitators,” who have been arrested and imprisoned in various cities. According to the British consular “reports included the names of eighteen hundred Armenians.” Some of these prisoners, after having been well fleeced, were likely set free while at their respective cities, others possibly left still in prisons, and a great number of them were probably done away with in various ways;[131] for we were informed by the following despatch that only fifty-six were tried at Angora: Constantinople, June 18, 1893—“The trial of Armenians accused of being concerned in rioting at Cæsarea and Marsovan last spring has just been concluded at Angora. Seventeen of the prisoners, including Professors Thoumanian and Kayayan, were condemned to death; six, including the Protestant pastor at Goemerek, were sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment; eighteen—one was a woman, thirty-three years old—were sentenced to imprisonment for terms ranging from seven to ten years, and fifteen were acquitted.” Three others tortured to death in prison.
Professors Thoumanian and Kayayan were pardoned by the sultan on the condition that “they should leave the Turkish territories and never return.”
The following despatch is reproduced to show what impression the Foreign office of Her Majesty’s government had received with regard to the trials of those unfortunate Armenians, and their execution:
London, August 2, 1893—“The question of Turkish outrages upon the Armenian Christians was brought up in the House of Commons to-day. Several members asked for information as to the charges made that the Turkish officials had tortured the prisoners who were some time ago arrested for complicity in the seditious rioting in Cæsarea and Marsovan in their efforts to get the accused to implicate themselves and others. In response to the questions Sir Edward Grey, Parliamentary Secretary of the Foreign office, said that what little information the Foreign Office had on the subject was very painful. Fifty-six persons had been (tried) arrested and of this number seventeen had been condemned to death, and many of the others sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Subsequently the Sultan of Turkey commuted the death sentence of all but five of the prisoners. These five men have been executed within the past two or three days. From the evidence that had been given at the trials, all of which had been carefully investigated by the British representative in Turkey, and a report thereon forwarded to the Foreign Office, it was clear that two of the men executed, and probably more, were innocent of the charges made against them. The British representative in Constantinople had used his influence to convince the Ottoman authorities that the trials were unfair, but his efforts to have the wrong righted were in vain.”
These political “agitators” and “seditious rioters,” terms applied to the Armenians by the Turkish government and its officials, only were mere inventions. As it has been said the oppression, cruel persecutions, and outrages drove the Armenians to desperation, and when they did anything in self-defense, or even if they attempted to consult what they should do against the assaults, they were set upon and treated still worse. The disturbance at Yozgat, for instance, was stated in the following manner: An Armenian spy in the employ of the Turkish government was murdered by an Armenian revolutionist from Russia. Instead of the murderer being found and arrested, all the men of the village where the murder had taken place were arrested and taken to Yozgat. The four police officers who remained in the village committed every outrage upon the defenseless women, who went in a body to Yozgat and marched through the market calling upon the Armenians of the city to avenge their wrongs. “Some one rang the bell of the church, and a large number of Armenians closed their shops and collected at the church for consultation. Military commander of the town heard this and hastened to the church, where he tried to calm the people and persuaded them to disperse, assuring them the guilty officer should be punished. He was meeting with some success when the troops sent by the governor arrived.” The troops had come there for business. A riot was created, and a “hundred and twenty-five Armenians were killed and three hundred and forty wounded,” as the result of this riot.
A commission was sent from Constantinople to investigate, and a reign of terror in the town was the result. Under cover of searching the houses of all the Armenians, they were plundered and outraged without mercy, and a great number thrown into prison, and tortured to force them to give evidence against one another.
I believe the Sultan, who had fashioned himself into an angel of light had chosen this method to feel his way and see whether the guardians of his Christian subjects could see through the tissue of his falsehood and call him to halt, or they would be willing for their own conveniences to accept his construction of suppressing a “sedition.”
The Representative Committee of the society of Friends in Great Britain addressed a memorial to the Earl of Kimberley, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. (See “Minutes” of 1894, held in London.)
“The Representative committee of the society of Friends in Great Britain have had their attention recently directed to the suffering and persecuted condition of the Armenian Christian subjects of the Porte, and have been at some pains to investigate the facts of the case. They are compelled to conclude that persecution of a cruel character has been and is being carried on by Turkish officials, which is a disgrace to any government, and to the age in which we live.