For your information and to complete your correspondence in this matter, 1
herewith transmit a copy of the Department’s instruction to the United
States consul at Jerusalem, No. 36 of the 12th instant, upon the
subject.
[Inclosure in No. 140.]
Mr. Rives to Mr.
Gillman.
Department of State,
Washington, October 12,
1888.
No. 36.]Sir: Your dispatches, Nos. 62 and 65, dated,
respectively, August 30 and September 10, ultimo, have been received.
They relate to the attempted expulsion from Palestine of three citizens
of the United States—Meyer Freeman, Isaac Gliechman, and Jacob
Reichman—who having arrived at Jaffa on the 20th of August last by
steamer from Port Said, were prevented from continuing their journey to
Jerusalem on the grounds that they were Hebrews, and that their
passports, issued by the Department of State in July last, did not bear
the visa of some Ottoman consul abroad.
It appears that their passports were taken from them (although
subsequently returned), and they were notified that they would be
required to leave Palestine by the first steamer. Through the efforts of
the consular agent at Jaffa, Mr. Hardegg, their
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attempted expulsion was deferred until September
6. One of the persons in question, Jacob Reichman, escaped, on August
27, from Jaffa, while Meyer Freeman and Isaac Gliechman (the latter
accompanied by his wife) succeeded in evading the vigilance of the Jaffa
police, reached Jerusalem on the 5th of September, and were at once
placed under police restraint and threatened anew with expulsion. They
were, however, offered their liberty on condition of your signing an
assurance that they would remain in Palestine only three months, which
you very properly refused to do. They were subsequently released in
consequence, as would appear, of a perfunctory and irresponsible
guaranty, on the part of a resident of Jerusalem, that they would quit
Palestine as required. You had reported the case to our legation at
Constantinople, and were awaiting the result, the persons in question
remaining at liberty, and the date of their notified expulsion,
September 6, having passed without steps being taken to effect their
removal.
A report in their case has been received from Mr. King, charge’
d’affaires ad interim at Constantinople, who
writes, under date of the 24th ultimo (No. 115), that he had actively
intervened with the Porte, and caused telegraphic orders to be sent the
authorities at Jerusalem by the minister of foreign affairs and the
Grand Vizier, which he hoped would stop the attempted expulsion.
Your course on the whole seems to have been proper, and the language
employed by you to the Ottoman authorities, although very emphatic, may
not have been unduly so in view of the slight amenability of the Turkish
provincial officers to temperate reasoning or even to superior
orders.
The question out of which this incident grows is not a new one. Under
date of 2d March last, Mavroyeni Bey, the Turkish envoy at this capital,
informed the Department that in view of the alleged inconvenience of the
resort of numerous alien Israelites to Palestine for the purpose of
business and residence, the Sublime Porte had decided to authorize the
entrance of such persons only on the condition that they bear passports
which shall “expressly state that they are going to Jerusalem in the
performance of a pilgrimage and not for the purpose of engaging in
commerce or taking up their residence there,” that the passport so drawn
up shall be duly visaed by Ottoman consuls, and
that on arriving the holders shall be bound to provide themselves with
“permits of sojourn” (permis de séjour) issued by
the imperial authorities and couched in the same terms as the
passports—the duration of such permitted sojourn not to exceed three
months.
Mr. Straus was promptly directed to protest against such a measure. As
you will see by the inclosed copies of our correspondence, stress was
laid upon the total repugnance of the measure to the principles upon
which our Government rests and which necessarily determine our treatment
of citizens at home or abroad.
The impossibility of making any distinction as to our citizens based upon
creed or race precludes any recognition of any curtailment of their
treaty rights abroad on such grounds, and in entering into reciprocal
stipulations for the mutual advantage and protection of our citizens
abroad and aliens in the United States, no qualification of the sole
condition of citizenship could be implied or imposed by the other
contracting party without being expressly consented to by us.
No treaty has been entered into between the United States and Turkey to
curtail the personal rights or liberty of our citizens, and no such
curtailment can now be introduced into our conventional obligations at
the will of one of the parties thereto. Still less can Turkey claim, as
she has appeared to do, our assistance in enforcing a regulation in
execution of her claim to apply a discriminatory treatment, the right to
which we absolutely deny.
As explained in the Department’s reply to Mavroyeni Bey and its
instruction to Mr. Straus, the passports we issue can contain no
declaration, expressed or inferential, of the creed of the citizens to
whom they are issued, or certification of their purpose in going abroad.
It is equally incompetent to the Department’s agents abroad to make such
statements, and still more so to limit the personal freedom of our
citizens within their jurisdiction except by due process of law. The
guaranty you were asked by the local authorities to give in respect of
Freeman and Gliechman would have been expressly and inferentially
obnoxious to all objections recited and therefore unlawful. Your refusal
to comply with such a request is entirely approved. You can assume no
inquisitorial functions in regard to the private and personal affairs of
our citizens within your jurisdiction, and so far as their passports are
concerned, your official duty is limited to affixing your visa as good for your consular district, and to
endeavoring to secure for them, without discrimination, the treatment
which law-abiding citizens are entitled by treaty.
A copy of this instruction will be sent, with transcripts of your
dispatches, to Minister Straus, for his information.
I am, etc.,
G. L. Rives,
Acting Secretary.
