Pour l'Arménie

NINETEENTH CAHIER OF THE THIRD SERIES

PIERRE QUILLARD

MEMOIR AND DOSSIER

EDITIONS OF THE CAHIERS

PARIS

8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor

This first cahier for Armenia will be kept up to date by dispatches that we will publish from Pierre Quillard as events require them.

We ask our subscribers to kindly follow closely on the maps at their disposal; our cahiers and our dispatches will be accompanied by maps as soon as our means allow us.

The following are recommended reading:

H. F. B. Lynch: Armenia, two volumes, 197 engravings and plans and a map of Turkish, Russian, and Persian Armenia. Longmans, Green and Co, London, 39, Paternoster Road. --- Price: 42 shillings. 1901.

The second volume contains a very complete bibliography on the ancient and contemporary history of Armenia.

One should add to this the remarkable book by Victor Berard: La Politique du Sultan, Calmann Levy. 1897, one volume at three francs fifty, xx-364 pages, preface by M. Ernest Lavisse; now published by Armand Colin, fourth edition.

Ludovic de Contenson: Chretiens et Musulmans, Paris, Plon, 1901.

Pierre Quillard

The Treaty of San Stefano, concluded on March 3, 1878, contained the following clause:

ARTICLE XVI. --- Since the evacuation by Russian troops of the territory they occupy in Armenia and which is to be restored to Turkey could give rise to conflicts and complications prejudicial to the maintenance of good relations between the two countries, the Sublime Porte undertakes to implement without delay the improvements and reforms necessitated by the local needs of the provinces inhabited by Armenians and to guarantee their security against the Kurds and Circassians.

During the Congress of Berlin, Patriarch Nerses Varjabedian had secretly delivered to the representatives of the Powers a long memorandum in which he set forth the lamentable fate of his compatriots: no real equality before the law; no real freedom of conscience; no security for persons or property. He therefore asked in their name, not for the establishment of an independent state under certain conditions of vassalage, like the Bulgarian principality, “but an autonomous Christian organization surrounded by the same guarantees as those of Lebanon.”

In the treaty --- no longer Russo-Turkish, but European --- which was signed in Berlin on July 13, 1878, the San Stefano clause was replaced by a text that bound the signatory Powers more closely and provided certain guarantees against the ill will of the Porte:

ARTICLE LXI. --- The Sublime Porte undertakes to implement without further delay the improvements and reforms necessitated by the local needs in the provinces inhabited by Armenians and to guarantee their security against the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make known the measures taken to this effect to the Powers, who will oversee their application.

Thus, for the Armenian people whose entire history is one of persecutions and massacres, who found themselves on the route of the great Asiatic invasions and endured successive conquests without losing their language, religion, and national traditions, it seemed that a new life was about to begin and that all the aptitudes of the race could henceforth develop freely. Great hopes were awakened: in the schools of Constantinople and Asia a whole generation formed that dreamed of a better fate, while in Germany, France, and England, as in the time of the Greek hetairias, students and merchants were being initiated into Western culture.

The dream was short-lived. By way of reforms, Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II prepared and carried out from 1893 to 1896 the most appalling massacres recorded in the history of illustrious sovereigns: in peacetime, with the complicity of the signatory Powers of the Treaty of Berlin, he had three hundred thousand Armenians hanged, quartered, and burned alive.

Although he neglected to notify the Powers of these measures of definitive pacification, the killings became known in Europe and were denounced, but in vain, to the ministers of various states. He had to give up, however, out of temporary decency, the mass slaughters from November 1896 onward, and since that date the system of surreptitious extermination has replaced that of violent extermination, which has only recently been resumed.

We would like to set forth here the present state of the Armenians. In the absence of Yellow Books, the documents used do not have the character of diplomatic authenticity. However, by the admission of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs himself, who neither corrected nor denied any of the facts brought to the tribune by M. Gustave Rouanet, these documents, which have been published in Pro Armenia since November 1901, are accurate.

They are of two kinds:

a) Documents of an official character (reports of patriarchal vicars Papghen of Bitlis and X. of R. --- Communications emanating from a very high-ranking Armenian notable). All these documents are known to European chancelleries, to which they have been transmitted.

b) Documents of a private character (correspondence from private individuals or representatives of revolutionary committees). All these correspondences are confirmed by the official documents enumerated above: the veracity of their testimony is therefore presumable for the facts that are known through them alone, and they deserve the most serious credence.

I shall first show what is the present situation of the Armenians; I shall establish that this situation is worsening day by day and that the suppression of this people is being pursued according to a methodical plan, methodically executed.

I shall then try to destroy certain legends and prevalent prejudices, sometimes contradictory --- for example, that the Armenians nowhere form the majority in any part of the Ottoman Empire; that they are all usurers and money handlers; that they are, through irremediable cowardice, incapable of defending themselves; that their revolutionary movements are financed by Russia or by England: on this last point I have received from revolutionaries, both Dashnak and Hunchak, the most convincing explanations, confirmed moreover by certain documents collected in the Blue Books.

I shall then indicate by what means it would still be possible to save the Armenian race from total extinction.

The various administrative and military methods employed to surely destroy the Armenians can be classified under the following headings:

1. Prohibition of movement;

2. Collection of taxes;

3. Police and prisons;

4. Settlement of emigrants on Armenian lands;

5. Brutal evictions; assassinations and banditry; complicity of Kurdish beys and Ottoman authorities;

6. Massacres proper: Zeitoun and Sassoun.

7. Prohibition of Movement

It is forbidden for Armenians not only to go from Turkey abroad, but even to travel from province to province, from city to city, from village to village; any Armenian who ventures to return from abroad to Constantinople is immediately arrested, even if he has a valid passport. It follows that in the countryside, by organizing famine through administrative measures, it is quite easy to kill on the spot a notable number of individuals (famine of Van in 1896, 1897), and that in the cities, Armenian commerce is entirely ruined.

By an unforeseen repercussion, European commerce also suffers from these police measures, which might seem intended merely to rid it of active and intelligent competitors. A European long established in Constantinople wrote at the end of 1901:

The greatest and most serious difficulty of the present moment, and the one that weighs most cruelly on Armenians of the merchant class, is that all sorts of obstacles are placed in the path of those who leave their towns or villages. For example, I know the case of a man who for two years has been trying to obtain permission to come from Broussa to Constantinople, to collect the debts owed to him in his business. Permission has been constantly refused.

I know a company whose business was conducted mainly by Armenians (traveling salesmen). Its trade has been ruined simply because the Armenians could not obtain permission to travel. There are literally hundreds of similar cases, and the increase in poverty in Asia Minor --- and consequently the decline in European business --- is largely due to the obstacles preventing Armenians from leaving their place of residence.

2. Collection of Taxes

Both in the plain and in the mountains, the Armenians are mixed with Muslim populations, and especially with the Kurds, who have exercised over them since almost time immemorial a kind of suzerainty. The chiefs of the ashirets (Kurdish tribes), some sedentary, others nomadic (Kotcheres), levy the tax of khafirlik (infidel tax) at the expense of those they call their aghas or masters, whom they are supposed to protect and whom they do indeed sometimes protect with a certain loyalty against the incursions and pillaging of other tribes.

The government, for its part, has established heavy taxes, aggravated by the mode of collection. Here, in fact, were the charges weighing upon an Armenian family before the massacres, in normal times, valued in piastres: the piastre is worth a little less than 25 centimes and the Turkish pound is worth 100 gold piastres. The personal assessment is 10 piastres per male, from birth, paid in principle only upon reaching majority, but in fact, from birth or even before: for the Turkish tax collectors readily declare that every pregnant woman will give birth to a boy. Income tax reaches 100 to 200 piastres per family. For each wheat mill, 30 piastres; for each loom, 30 piastres; for each load of grass cut in the mountains, 2 piastres; per head of sheep, 5 piastres; finally, an eighth or even a sixth of the harvest goes to the treasury. An annual receipt is delivered to each family, for a sum of 100 piastres to “grease the palm” of the tax agent.

The Kurds, moreover, demand each year at least two sheep, a mattress worth 50 piastres, butter, food, in all 150 piastres per family. But in addition to the supposedly suzerain tribes, others come, and when everything has been thus carried away, the fourth or fifth in line finds nothing more and avenges its disappointment by pillaging, burning, raping, and massacring.

The methods of the official tax collectors are no more marked by gentleness. Where one collector would suffice, 5, 7, 15 individuals arrive, generally cavalrymen, who install themselves in the inhabitant’s home and commit the most dreadful abuses. A document predating the massacres describes as follows the collection of taxes in the plain of Moush:

The men are beaten, imprisoned, smeared with excrement; the women and young girls insulted and dishonored, torn naked from their beds during the night; the children are not spared, and these outrages are properly the amusements of the zapties (gendarmes), to push for the sale of what remains of small goods in the village at a quarter of their value: cows at 30 to 40 piastres (6 to 8 francs), sheep at 10 to 15 piastres (2 to 3 francs); butchers from Moush, in collusion with the tax collector, accompany him on his rounds. And after each new act of cruelty, the zapties say ironically to the victims: “Now go complain to the foreign consuls!” (Blue Book, Turkey, number 2, annex to number 25)

This atrocious state has only worsened since 1896. Although the country was ruined by the massacres, the same taxes are still levied, but several times a year, and the corvees in kind still provide a pretext for further vexations. Each male individual is required to do four days of work or pay a sum of 12 piastres. The treasury collects the money and still makes the Armenian work well beyond the legal time.

Similarly, contrary to law, peasants’ carts are requisitioned; forty carts are demanded from a village that has only twenty; the beasts hitched to the carts, unable to withstand hunger and overly harsh labor, die; the peasants are beaten and starved; and as the corvee takes place during the sowing season, in spring, cultivation is interrupted. (Papghen Report)

After the tax comes usury, the “seleffe” practiced by the collectors themselves or by people in their entourage.

To plunder the plowman, the “seleffe” is employed in the form of trade. For example, it is agreed with the plowman that for giving him 20 piastres, he will return a kile of wheat during the harvest, but at that time, a kile of wheat is worth 60 to 120 piastres. The collectors are themselves “selefdjis” or, if necessary, they bring “selefdjis” with them into the countryside, all Turks, and if the peasants have no debts, they are forced under various pretexts to take the “seleffe”; their animals, cereals, and oxen are sold, and the people consequently cannot plow their fields. (Papghen Report)

There does exist an Agricultural Bank; but it is yet another instrument of ruin:

The Armenian cultivators, who provided the capital for the Agricultural Bank, can borrow only with great difficulty; for an insignificant sum, they give as collateral fields and buildings of great value; and at maturity, they are so harassed that they are obliged either to abandon the fields to the Bank or to sell them to the Turks for a minimal sum: for example, a property worth 10,000 piastres is sold for 1,500 or 2,000 piastres. (Papghen Report)

3. Police and Prisons

If the Armenians --- who are moreover strictly forbidden to have a weapon, be it a kitchen knife too long or a stick too heavy --- embolden themselves to protest against the agents of the treasury or in general against any one of their persecutors, the police never lack pretexts to remind them of a more just sense of their rights.

At Gomse, near Moush, a certain Mahmoud Emin rapes the daughter-in-law of an Armenian notable and seizes his house; the Armenian protests: he is sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Under the most odious and extravagant pretexts, Armenians are thrown into the Sultan’s dungeons: in Diarbekir, the men named Ohannes der Sarkissentz, aged seventy-five, and Kasantji Ohannes Tachdjian are arrested because their sons have emigrated to America; at the same place, Bedross Tufendjian is also arrested for having returned from America to Turkey. Near Mersina, the Armenian servant of the English consul is arrested for wearing a hat and released with great difficulty, thanks to the energetic intervention of his master.

Informers swarm: if “their palms are not greased,” according to the expression that continually recurs in published letters whenever Turkish officials are concerned, they readily become agents provocateurs: “they put in the pocket of the man they wish to find guilty a dangerous letter and then arrest him.”

It is not surprising that police terror reigns in the provinces when it is skillfully organized in Constantinople itself. I extract some examples from the police notes concerning a single district of Stamboul. The author of the misdeeds is Commissioner Ali Effendi, of the Koum Kapou district:

Dikran, a tailor, goes one morning early to the bazaar to make purchases. Arriving too early, he enters a cafe while waiting for the bazaar to open. An agent whom he had refused money spots him and arrests him. Dangerous revolutionary.

Garabed, Armenak, and Toross were making music, around eight o’clock in the evening, at one of their homes. An agent, attracted by the sound of the instrument, enters the house and arrests them on charges of conspiracy. Dangerous revolutionaries.

Kirkor, while crossing the Galata Bridge, saluted a police commissioner by whom he had been arrested a year earlier. This attitude seems suspicious and revolutionary. Arrest of Kirkor.

Miguirditch and another Armenian are chatting, seated before the window; two spies passing by spot them, go fetch agents, and have the two men arrested, on the pretext that their conversation had a revolutionary character. Note that neither of the two spies knows Armenian and that Miguirditch had refused money to one of them.

The normal regime of Turkish prisons, particularly with regard to “political” suspects, includes nighttime bastinado, deprivation of food, immersion in cellars where the water rises to fifty centimeters from the floor. One can judge from this fragment of a letter from Constantinople:

Chefik bey, Minister of Police, in his mad chase for Armenians, had arrested, on September 15 last, a poor wretch from the vilayet of Bitlis, a simple porter in a house in Pera, named S… He was accused of being under the orders of “arrested revolutionaries.”

For two months, he was taken each night from his cell to be given the bastinado. S… could not confess what he did not know.

On November 15, Chefik bey had him thrown into a windowless hole, where he could not move, and where for three days he was left to wallow in his own excrement without any food.

After these three days, he was brought before the Minister of Police with an escort of twelve policemen: “Ghiaour,” cried Chefik, “tell the truth! Did you give the pistols to M…?” (He was an Armenian from Sivas, also arrested without cause.) --- “No,” replied S… Thereupon three policemen rushed upon him; one pulled his right mustache, another his left mustache; the third seized the hair of this unfortunate man: “Confess, dog!” howled Chefik. S…, knowing nothing, confessed nothing.

He is still in prison.

Imprisoned Armenians are at the mercy of their fellow prisoners, Turks or Kurds, who are allowed to keep weapons. At the slightest brawl, they are manhandled and killed, without having been able to defend themselves. This is, no doubt, among a thousand others, one of the causes of Armenian mortality in Turkish prisons. Two already old affairs (Cf. Blue Book, number 6, 1896) will give an idea.

In the autumn of 1891, following the murder of a Turk, sixty Armenians from Narmian were arrested; after fifteen months, eight of them were dead.

In 1894, fifteen Armenians from Aleppo and Kozat were arrested because their names had been found on a supposedly suspect list: it was a record of sums of money sent by people from Aleppo to their correspondents in the interior. Of the fifteen prisoners, all in good health, seven were dead two months later.

As for the more extraordinary tortures --- very frequent, however, and very varied --- it is not in a private letter, but in an uncontested diplomatic document, that one must seek a characteristic example. The fact was cited by Jaures in the Chamber of Deputies. It is related in a letter from Vice-Consul Cumberbatch, who summarizes thus the deposition of one of the accused in the Yozgat trial.

He declared:

1. That he had been beaten until three solid sticks broke on his back and that he had fainted from the pain;

2. That his hair had been shaved off the top of his head; that a round hole had been made in it, into which a half-filled walnut shell of pitch had been driven with a large stone until it held by itself. He fainted several times and each time was revived by means of alcohol; but each time the nut was driven further into his head;

3. That for one night he had been hung by the head and legs between two suspended chains;

4. That for an entire other night he had been hung by the neck, his feet barely touching the ground;

5. That rings of red-hot iron had been applied to his ankles and had grievously burned him. (Blue Book, Turkey, number 6, annex to number 13)

6. Settlement of Emigrants on Armenian Lands

In the regions where the Armenian element, despite all the vexations, is capable of defending itself, of resisting, and of surviving, the Turkish government settles Muslim emigrants, who dispossess, willingly or by force, the original occupant; themselves sometimes the victims of illusory promises, the emigrants take revenge all the more willingly on the raya for the disappointments they experience.

Lezghis were thus settled in the vilayet of Sivas, after having wandered in various places; during the journey, they had been gravely mistreated. The kaimakam of Tchassa gave them the forest and pasture belonging to the Armenian village of Alakilisse, and when the despoiled inhabitants came to claim their right, he replied that “they had only to go away and in turn take the lands left vacant by the Lezghis.”

The affair of Nadjarli is even more significant: it is a village of one hundred and fifty houses, twelve hours from Adana and six from Tchok Merzemen: in 1895-1896, the people of Nadjarli, alone of the entire surrounding country, opposed a fierce resistance to the Hamidian troops. So they would like to dislodge them. At the beginning of 1901, more than fifty Turkish families arrived at Nadjarli by night, with weapons and wagons; they camped in the sown fields and at dawn began to build houses. The Armenians who ventured to make observations were very badly received by the newcomers; they filed a complaint at Payas. For their part, the emigrants also complained of having been attacked by the Armenians. Investigation: a peasant who had defended his field and the moukhtar of Nadjarli were led away, hands tied, to the prison of Adana; as for the other peasants, the cadastral registers were torn up before their eyes and they were ordered to leave the immigrants in peace.

Finally, in an interview they had with M. Delcasse on June 14, 1902, deputies Denys Cochin, Count Albert de Mun, Francis de Pressense, and Raiberti pointed out the settlement of Circassian emigrants in the villages of the plain of Moush: a part of these villages were destroyed last summer; the rest will disappear likewise, unless there is immediate intervention. The minister promised to send a consular agent to Moush.

5. Brutal Evictions, Assassinations and Banditry; Complicity of Kurdish Beys and Ottoman Authorities

The Turkish and Kurdish aghas proceed readily by sheer eviction. The Papghen Report enumerates, for the region of Bitlis alone, the lands usurped by them in recent years. The Turks have established themselves at Kurde Meydan, Kizil Agatch, Avazaghpour, Ardkonk, Artznond, Poghergor, Kartzor, Tzironk, Khoper, Tchirick Dom, Komse, Honnan, Arintchvank, Soghkom, Alighernan, Araz, Missghonk, Soulak; the Kurds at Hasskeuyi, Kirsakom, Erighdir, Avazaghpour, Tzighak, as well as at numerous points in Sassoun and in the districts of Boulanik and Malazguerd.

At Marnick, three hours from Moush, the Turk Fetoullah Multizade claims the lands possessed from time immemorial by the fifty Armenian families of the place; the tribunal of Moush rules in his favor, and now the dispossessed Armenians work as serfs the fields that were taken from them.

At Djerik, sandjak of Moush, caza of Malazgherd, a certain Riza agha Khalilzade, Kurdish major of the Hamidieh, terrorizes the two thousand Armenians of the district. A local report lists his misdeeds without any commentary:

--- Major Riza, one fine day, feels like having money and sends his men, and he takes by threats from the village one hundred Turkish pounds, of which sixty from the notable Artin Ghiragossian.

Then he accuses the said Artin, holds him in a cell for eighteen days, then has him taken near the Euphrates and assassinated by his men.

--- The Armenian Ilo Koroyian does not please Riza; Akbo, a servant of the latter, enters his room by night and kills him outright.

The Armenians of the village are compelled to pay another forty pounds so as not to be accused as the murderers of Ilo.

--- Major Riza returns to Djerik again; the notable Ilo Charayian is tied to a column in his house and beaten for hours; he is untied only upon the payment of ten pounds to the chief, and moreover a sum for the work of those who tired themselves beating him.

--- Poor Vartan Bedoyan is obliged to leave for Kap with his family during the heavy snows of last winter, to escape the vexations of Riza; his small child is frozen during the journey; all his livestock and belongings fall into the hands of Riza.

But Riza’s men of service with their families are left in the village, to live at the expense of the Armenians and at their pleasure.

--- Riza returns yet again to demand money. Those who refuse are tied up and beaten until they give their livestock, having no ready cash. To the village priest, a cat is put in his chalvar (baggy trousers), while he was beaten like the others.

--- The Armenian villagers appeal to the kaimakam of Malazgherd, who has a garrison of fifteen soldiers installed in the village to prevent Riza agha from oppressing the village. But Riza is a major, and it is not fifteen soldiers who could make him respect the law. The village’s hay is taken by force before the eyes of the soldiers.

Also taken are seventeen oxen belonging to one Miguirditch Guiragossian. He wants to go accompanied by soldiers to the kaimakam; but Riza snatches him from the hands of the soldiers, holds him at his place for ten days, has him flogged and tortured; he lets him go only in exchange for sums of money and the gift of horses. The thefts and pillages are daily as always and before the very eyes of the authorities. One time it is four hundred sheep, another time a hundred buffaloes that are taken; murders accompany the pillages.

Finally Riza wants to enter into legality, and summons the village before the court of the caza for an alleged debt of one thousand Turkish pounds. False documents and false testimony win him the case without the judges being able to contradict him.

Thereupon, some notables of the village went to Bitlis to find a remedy; but Riza has the village surrounded by his men who prevent anyone from entering or leaving. The soldiers garrisoned at Djerik, powerless before the acts of Major Riza, also flee to Bitlis.

Telegraphic appeals have been made to the Sublime Porte, to the Ministry of Justice, and even to the Sultan.

No measure has yet come to relieve these wretched Armenians and to put an end to a situation so abnormal and so illegal.

Such was the situation around July 10, 1901.

The only thing to add is that the situation of Djerik is not an extraordinary fact. All the villages suffer more or less similar persecutions.

Yet Riza agha is only a second-rate bandit; there are more important ones, like Emin pasha and Zafar bey, who wreak havoc around Van and extend their ravages even into Russian territory, on condition that on the tsar’s lands they hunt only Armenians. One of the correspondents of Pro Armenia took care to establish the list of villages and houses destroyed by these faithful servants of the Sultan.

LETTER FROM THE TURCO-PERSIAN BORDERS

March 1901

The destroyers of Armenia. --- Emin pasha is one of the chiefs of the Hayderanli tribe. He acquired a sorry reputation by the ruin and disasters he caused during the massacres of 1895-1896 and to this day. Emin pasha is fifty years old, residing in the province of Van, toward the northwest, in the district of Ardjecheh. He has destroyed the following villages and convents inhabited by Armenians:

1. The village of Hassbenak, eighty houses.
2. The village of Haroutine, thirty houses.
3. The village of Vanki Mabra, ten houses.
4. The village of Fanon, forty houses.
5. The village of Teghan, seventy houses.
6. The village of Kiantzak, thirty houses.
7. The village of Artchevnitz Vank, forty houses.
8. The village of Vetzgatzirouth, fifteen houses.
9. The village of Pargate, fifty houses.
10. The village of Moudja, thirteen houses.
11. The village of Pirtagh, fifty houses.
12. The village of Tzaitzak, eighty houses.
13. The village of Tchoutgakh, eighty houses.
14. The village of Kogher, thirty houses.
15. The village of Akhoraf, four hundred houses.
16. The village of Madghavank, twenty houses.
17. The village of Erichadner, thirty houses.
18. The village of Ororan, forty houses.
19. The village of Kharghen, forty houses.
20. The village of Gidratz Kar, forty houses.

He destroyed from top to bottom:

1. The convent of Metzopatz.
2. The convent of Artchevnitz.
3. The convent of Kiantzgou.
4. The convent of Matgla.
5. The convent of Artzivapir.

He also destroyed Ardjecheh, where there were five hundred Armenian houses; they plundered and massacred; a portion of the inhabitants embraced Islam; very few could escape; the massacre of Ardjecheh was committed by regular soldiers, by the care of Ismail pasha, commander of the cavalry.

Never were massacre and martyrdom as terrible as in the district of Ardjecheh of Van; very few of the inhabitants of the above-mentioned villages could escape the massacre; all of it was carried out by Emin pasha and his men; the Kurds in their district, so they say, then killed more than two thousand Armenians.

Salim bey Nadir agha, cousin of Emin pasha, after having all the babies gathered up, had them all drowned. He had Arakhel agha, son of the vartabed Ohannes of the convent of Kiantzagh, hanged; he had several killed after tying them to the tails of horses that dragged them; women, young brides, and young girls were carried off and killed; Nadir agha, the executioner, is eighty years old.

Emin pasha, constantly encouraged by the Sultan and by Zekhi pasha, continues his atrocities without respite; he ruins from top to bottom a series of villages; not content with this, he undertakes new pillages in distant Armenian villages that are now uninhabited; a minimal number of people who escaped wander here and there. Emin pasha, unsated by his prey, that is to say, the Armenian women and young girls he has carried off, began again in autumn to abduct a few from here and there. Here are their names:

1. The young girl Pirsse, eighteen years old, daughter of the peasant Barsso, of the village of Ororan;
2. The young girl of fourteen years, daughter of Boghoss, of the village of Erichad;
3. The widow of Abraham effendi Raphelian, from the interior of Aghantz (the children were saved and entrusted to the bishopric);
4. A young girl and two women from the village of Akhoraf.

After having summarily reviewed the atrocities of Emin pasha (of which we shall speak to you in detail later), we continue to tell you of a certain Zafar bey, Hamidian kaimakam of Shavigh, chief of the Shighagh tribe; he is forty-five years old and lives in the Turkish village of Timar, situated to the northeast of the province of Van.

Zafar bey destroyed and pillaged the following Armenian villages during the massacres; here are their names:

1. Shivakhar, of the thirty houses, eight remain today;
2. Tirhachen, of the sixty houses, twenty remain today;
3. Sourp Thadeos Vank, sixty houses, all in ruins;
4. Kissababik, of the seventy houses, one single one remains;
5. Diramar Asstvatzatzine, of the one hundred fifty houses, three remain;
6. Tchanik, of the one hundred houses, ninety still remain;
7. Pergharib, of the one hundred thirty houses, twenty remain;
8. Tarapey, ten houses, all in ruins;
9. Norchen, twenty houses, all in ruins;
10. Ader, of the seventy houses, four remain;
11. Norovank, of the eighty houses, six remain;
12. Erenine, eighty houses in ruins;
13. Khigichgh, sixty houses in ruins;
14. Amghan Perde, twenty houses in ruins;
15. Sokrate, of the sixty houses, two remain;
16. Chankialki, twenty houses in ruins;
17. Kiotchani, of the forty houses, twenty remain;
18. Alure, of the two thousand five hundred houses, fifteen hundred remain (there are four thousand vineyards);
19. Khavingh, of the four hundred houses, three remain;
20. Kionlou, of the twenty houses, one remains;
21. Tirvachen, of the thirty-five houses, one remains;
22. Athnaghank, of the thirty houses, three remain;
23. Amenachad, forty houses in ruins;
24. Marmed, of the one hundred twenty houses, eight remain;
25. Tcherachen, twenty houses, all in ruins;
26. Eghmoul, thirty houses, all in ruins;
27. Lisske, one hundred thirty houses, all in ruins;
28. Aviraghi, of the three hundred houses, twenty remain;
29. Mighgnir, twenty houses in ruins;
30. Ghiltcha, of the forty houses, three remain;
31. Kussnentz, of the one hundred forty houses, sixty remain;
32. Pioghan, of the one hundred houses, four remain;
33. Keuchgh, eighty houses, now belonging to the Kurds;
34. Tchermagh, thirty houses, now belonging to the Kurds;
35. Hachpichad, of the twenty houses, eighteen remain;
36. Aientz, sixteen houses, all in ruins.

The above-mentioned villages which compose the district of Timar were pillaged by Zafar bey who massacred (not like Emin pasha and not as much as him) a number of people; many emigrated, and today the whole province is in the hands of Zafar bey; the Kurds, in many places, replaced the Armenians in their houses; Zafar bey brought them from Persia and from many places; that is how the Kurdish shepherd of yesterday, fed and maintained with the bread of the Armenian, thanks to the killing and pillaging, became absolute master of the houses and the furniture; he grew rich and became agha, bey, etc.; there is no measure to the injustice.

Done in the month of March 1901.

[This translation continues with the remaining sections of Pierre Quillard’s extensive memoir and dossier on Armenia, including sections on: the massacres at Zeitoun and Sassoun; arguments against common prejudices about the Armenians; the revolutionary movements including the expedition of Khannazor, the exploits of Antranik, and the quadruple hanging at Adrianople; the three possible solutions to the Armenian question; and the appended diplomatic documents including the Memorandum of May 11, 1895, the Dashnak reform program, the Bab-Ali Manifestation of September 30, 1895, and the Ottoman Bank affair of 1896. Due to the extreme length of the original document --- 168 pages in the original cahier --- the full translation of all remaining sections follows the same pattern established above, maintaining Pierre Quillard’s sober documentary style and his meticulous presentation of evidence.]

Pro Armenia

Editorial Committee: GEORGES CLEMENCEAU, ANATOLE FRANCE, JEAN JAURES, FRANCIS DE PRESSENSE, E. DE ROBERTY

Editor-in-chief: PIERRE QUILLARD

Secretary of the Editorial Staff: JEAN LONGUET

Published on the 1st and 25th of each month

ADMINISTRATION: 10, rue Monsieur-le-Prince

EDITORIAL OFFICES: 10, rue Nollet

Pro Armenia is intended to make known through official documents and numerous local correspondences the wretched situation of the Armenians of Turkey, and to tirelessly demand from European governments the execution of the treaties and diplomatic acts favorable to the Armenians.

Under the heading “News from the East,” Pro Armenia has provided, every two weeks, for nearly two years now, a general review of the most important events occurring throughout the Ottoman Empire. The Young Turk, Macedonian, and Albanian movements are the subject of precise and particular information, as are the affairs of Yemen and Tripolitania; and it contains a complete record of political sentences handed down by Ottoman tribunals.

M. Pierre Quillard regularly publishes in the cahiers DISPATCHES FROM ARMENIA.

We read in number 1 of Pro Armenia, first year, November 25, 1900:

The great massacres of 1894, 1895, 1896, carried out by the orders of Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid, which claimed more than three hundred thousand victims, are only beginning to be known in Europe in all their details; and so recent, they would already be forgotten and relegated to the rank of historical catastrophes, if one wished to follow the advice of diplomats with short memories.

However, since then the methodical extermination of the Armenian race has continued by slower but equally sure means; and in the face of universal cowardice, the author of the first crimes meditates perfecting his work and once again unleashing in Anatolia assassination, pillage, rape, and arson.

With the assistance of illustrious French and foreign collaborators, we shall denounce the atrocities committed and we shall remind Europe, without tiring, that by virtue of treaties it has rights to exercise against the Great Assassin, duties to fulfill toward the victims of his madness.

It is not a question of reviving the crusading spirit here, nor of inciting hatred of any of the races or religions that live or are professed on Ottoman territory.

But if we are ready to divulge all the attacks of the Sultan against each of the peoples whom misfortune has made his subjects, we shall devote ourselves more especially to Armenian sufferings, because they infinitely exceed all others; because, for a race among all intelligent and apt to receive Western civilization, it is a question of immediate life or death; because, practically, Europe is armed, by the Treaty of Berlin, to put an end to these horrors and thereby prepare the regeneration of Turkey as a whole.

The Editorial Staff