Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President, Transmitted to Congress, December 4, 1893
Mr. Terrell to Mr. Gresham.
Constantinople, August 30, 1893. (Received September 19.)
Sir: I have just received from a fellow-citizen, Mr. Edward Riggs, a teacher in Marsovan College, a written statement of the embarrassments to which that institution is subjected by the Turkish officials, in the effort to rebuild the female annex. I inclose a copy.
I also inclose a statement (copy) from Mr. Riggs of the tortures practiced on a native cook, to compel him to bear witness against the American missionaries and implicate them in a sedition, the headquarters of which was doubtless at Marsovan, a city of some 20,000 people. Mr. Riggs is an educated American, who impresses me favorably as a calm, thoughtful man.
It really seems that there is to be no end of trouble for the Marsovan College.
I have, etc.,
Memorandum concerning the rebuilding of the girls’ school building in Marsovan, Turkey, destroyed by fire Februarg 2, 1893.
When the Ottoman Government paid an indemnity of 500 Turkish pounds for the burning of the building newly erected for the girls’ boarding school in Marsovan, it was mutually understood that authorization was thereby given to the missionaries to reconstruct the building. Considering that this permission was given in good [Page 673] faith, the missionaries began to purchase material and to take the requisite steps for rebuilding. The land on which the building had been erected had been registered according to the old system in the name of a native of this country, Dr. Z. Melkon Altoonian, who is the physician of the missionaries and of their schools, and is a member of the faculty and also of the board of managers of the college. The local governor of Marsovan, Bekir Pasha, advised the missionaries, as a preliminary to the issuing of the permit to build, that they should have the land transferred to the name of one of themselves, and they were advised from Constantinople that this should be done both for this purpose and for the issuing also of the promised firman.
Accordingly the process was undertaken, and after innumerable delays and unexpected obstacles the preliminary processes were completed, the papers made out, and all that remained was the personal presence and affidavit of the parties in presence of the proper local functionaries. Here the missionaries were confronted with the demand that they give a written promise that on this land which they were thus said to be purchasing they would set up neither a church nor a school nor a hospital. Attention was called by the missionaries to the fact that their well-known purpose was to construct a school there, and also to the fact that this was not in reality a purchase, as the property had long been that of the missionaries, and had been so recognized by Government officials, so that the formal transfer was a mere technicality to bring the public records into line with actual facts.
After wrestling with this difficulty for some time and finding that it would not yield, the missionaries referred the matter to the governor-general, who had by that time returned from points farther west, to Marsovan. He stated that he knew nothing of the payment of any such indemnity or the granting of any authorization for the rebuilding of the school. But he promised to inquire of Constantinople by telegraph, and to give an early reply in accordance with the information he should receive. Days passed into weeks, and the governor-general left Marsovan, and still his reply was that he had not yet received any answer from Constantinople. One of the missionaries called on him in Kavza, five hours’ distance from Marsovan, and received the same reply, and it would seem hopeless now to attain the object in this way. After the affairs in the winter and spring, when appeal was made by the missionaries to the U. S. consul and minister for protection, this governor-general told them that they should have appealed to him, and threatened that if they should again appeal to their national representatives against the Turkish officials it would be worse for the missionaries. They desired to do him proper honor and referred this matter to him, but it is manifestly not the way to accomplish the business.
On the occasion of the call in Kavza the governor-general took the opportunity to warn the missionary against Dr. Altoonian. He remarked that Dr. A. was a bad man, a leader in sedition, and a hypocrite, trying to deceive the governor-general himself as well as the missionaries. On the very same day he had an interview with Dr. Altoonian, in which he turned the matter quite around the other way, warning him solemnly against having anything to do with the missionaries, as they were sure to get him into trouble. He laid down conditions on which alone he would be willing to continue friendly relations with him; one was that he should break off his relations with the missionaries, and another was that he should claim the piece of land in question as his own property and refuse to transfer it to the missionaries or any one else, and promising that he should be free to use and enjoy it as his own.
The summer is well-nigh gone, the material for the school building is already suffering, and will soon suffer much more from exposure to the weather, and the girls’ school is still deprived of the much needed building.
Memorandum concerning improper treatment of prisoners in Marsovan, Turkey.
The local police and gendarmes in Marsovan have for sometime past been actively engaged in the endeavor to capture certain fugitives who, on account of real or supposed connection with insurrectionary movements, have been in hiding in the city. During the night of Sunday, August 13, having tracked three of these men to a certain house, they tried to get hold of them there. The fugitives attempted to escape by climbing from one house top to another. One succeeded in evading his pursuers, but two were surrounded and caught on the roofs of houses. One of these houses was the home of a man named Harootune, who is employed as cook in the American [Page 674] college. The capture having been made on his premises, this man, though really innocent, was not very unnaturally arrested on suspicion of having connived at the attempt of the culprits to escape. Thus far the process appears to have been legitimate enough, but then followed scenes which beggar description, and for which a parallel must be sought in the early days of persecuted Christianity or in the blacker records of the Inquisition. Of four men who were similarly treated by a brutal soldiery, only the story of the one named above will here be given, as nearly as possible, in brief, in the words of the man himself, testified to by the ghastly marks of physical violence.
Instead of being taken to the common prison these men were locked up in certain filthy little cells in the decayed building assigned to the soldiers as barracks. The cell in which the cook above named was lodged was a windowless closet about 8 by 5 feet. The floor was sloppy mud, except at one end where the crumbling plaster from the wall had made a little pile of earth which was somewhat less soaked than the rest of the door, and on which the wretched man tried to curl himself up from time to time for a snatch of sleep in the intervals of direct torture during the live days of his incarceration. As soon as it was ascertained that he was a Protestant and connected with the college his ankles were loaded with iron chains weighing about 50 pounds. After some preliminary questions he was commanded to make confessions implicating the college in sedition. Without giving him time to refuse, the process of beating was begun. A soldier seized the victim’s head and held it under his arm, keeping him in a bowed position, while the captain(yuz-bashy)laid on heavy blows with a thick cudgel till he was tired, and then gave the club to another soldier to continue the process. This was repeated at intervals, and lie was told what he must confess, namely, that arms, ammunition, bombs, etc., were kept in the college; that revolutionary committees were organized there, and that the missionaries were respectively heads of these committees, their names being individually mentioned. When the victim, under repeated torture, had reached the point of utter exhaustion, he indicated his willingness to comply with the demands of his captors. Pen and paper were put into his hand and he began to write. When he had completed a few lines, his guards, being unable to read his writing, demanded that he should tell them what he had written, and he began to read somewhat as follows:
“Under compulsion, and contrary to my own will, I write down the following falsehoods at the dictation of my guards.”
The effect of this may be easily imagined; the barbarous treatment was renewed with increased violence.
Having reached a natural limit in the simplest form of torture, the self-appointed inquisitors proceeded to invent new methods of persecution. Tying ropes to his wrists and passing them through rings fastened high in the walls at opposite ends of the cell, they began to stretch his arms, continuing to raise him higher and higher, till the tips of his toes barely touched the ground. Raising the long iron chains which were attached to his ankles, they slung them over his extended arms, thus greatly increasing the weight pulling on his wrists. As long as he could bear his weight on tiptoe he could give a little relief to his tortured arms, but when the muscles of his feet became exhausted the entire burden came again upon the thongs with which he was suspended. The wrists were well-nigh dislocated, the hands became numb, and swelled nearly to bursting, while every individual bone and muscle in arms, neck, and shoulders was racked with unendurable pangs. The big town clock in the tower of the building in which this tragedy was being enacted enabled the victim to time his experiences, and for five consecutive quarters of an hour he hung thus between floor and roof. To reduce him to utter despair his guards went out of the room and shut the door, telling him that they were going to leave him so all night. He called out after them, “No, you are not; I am going to pray to my God for you and he will soften your hearts, so that you will soon come and let me down.” And they did.
One more form of torture completes the horrid list. Two soldiers leaped upon his shoulders as he sat crouching on his little pile of earth, and, clutching his throat, pressed their thumbs against his windpipe, choking him until unconsciousness came to his relief, and he lay in the mud as one dead, how long he does not know. Livid spots of black and blue in the sides of his neck bore testimony, after his release, to the shape and power of those brutal thumbs.
When he came to tell his story to the missionaries they had him remove his clothing that they might see the witness of his treatment, the clothes adhering as they were being removed, and those who saw that back, torn and bleeding and black and blistered, can never forget it till their dying day. The man told his story with great coolness and graphic simplicity, but when he came to the point of displaying the vivid evidences of the truth of his story he broke down and wept like a child, and a palpable dimness came over some other unaccustomed eyes at the same moment.
When the missionaries heard of the treatment this man was receiving they sent word to the local governor (kaimakam), drawing his attention to the facts and asking [Page 675] him to interfere. He expressed his disbelief, saying that such things were incredible, but upon inquiry he found the facts as represented, and had the man released.
It may not be out of place to remark that his excellency Bakir Pasha, the present kaimakam of Marsovan, from the day of his arrival (in March last) to the present time, has manifested a spirit of courteous and considerate impartiality, with a firm and dignified manner, which has won for him the confidence and esteem of all parties. May His Imperial Majesty have many such agents to secure justice and equity throughout the realm.
Memorandum concerning the present attitude of the Imperial Ottoman Government toward the American missionary institutions at Marsovan.
Disturbances during the past winter in Marsovan, Asia Minor, culminating in the burning of the new building designed for the girls’ boarding school, led to an official investigation, conducted by Mr. Newberry, secretary of the U. S. legation. As a result of that investigation the Imperial Ottoman Government paid an indemnity of 500 Turkish pounds, with authorization to reconstruct the building, and gave promise for the issuing of an imperial firman to the college of the American missionaries there. These facts, properly interpreted, serve to indicate that these institutions at Marsovan enjoy the favor of His Imperial Majesty and of the Ottoman Government, and this has been distinctly and repeatedly affirmed to the missionaries by the present governor-general of the province of Sivas, as also by his predecessors and by various other functionaries of the Turkish Government.
Through a painful process, extending through months past, the missionaries have been forced to the conviction that the exact opposite of this is the fact, and that a widespread and persistent effort is being made to break down and destroy these institutions and to hamper and check the legitimate business of the missionaries. This opposition appears to be based upon the unwarranted and unjust suspicion that the college and the missionaries are involved in the seditious movements which have recently been taking place among the Armenians of Asia Minor. The missionaries have uniformly shown themselves most friendly and loyal to the Ottoman Government, and while they have sought to forward the true interests of all the races of the Empire, they have never, for a moment, sympathized with the insurrectionary movements of some classes of the people. Indeed, if they have been at fault it has been in their slowness to believe that any persons could be so insane as to contemplate the projects of the revolutionists; and they have uniformly counseled and commanded their pupils to avoid all complicity with such movements. Officers of the Government have repeatedly noticed and read the warning which has been suspended on the walls of the college for several years past, forbidding the pupils to have or to express sentiments in anywise disloyal, or to own or have in their possession any book, paper, or manuscript derogatory to or disapproved of by the Government. Despite all this the suspicion has gone abroad that the college and the missionaries are at the bottom of all sedition, and government officials, instead of inquiring candidly into the facts, or accepting the results of the official investigations which have been made, have set themselves surreptitiously to work against the very life of the institutions which are doing all in their power to honor and maintain the Government. The following facts, taken from the experience of the past few weks, will serve to show the character of the evidence which forces itself upon the missionaries, convincing them that the friendly assurances of the officials are insincere and that their institutions are in serious peril:
- 1.
- In such places as Yezgat, Chorum, Vizir Keupru, Amasia, and Ordon, Government officials have privately called the patrons of the college, and, in apparently friendly manner, have warned them against sending their youth to the schools in Marsovan, describing them as bad schools, etc.
- 2.
- In some of the same towns and in other places clerks and underlings in Government employ have let slip the statement that one after another new and stringent orders were continually coming from their respective centers of authority, cautioning against the college, and giving instructions as to dealings with students and others coming from Marsovan schools.
- 3.
- At the close of the last term in July a number of the college students on their way to Yezgat, Cæsarea, Angora, etc., on reaching Chorum, twelve hours distant from Marsovan, were arrested as a body and thrown into the common jail. After a [Page 676] searching examination, in which all manner of questions were asked regarding the college, it was found that the personal vouchers and traveling permits of the young men were all right and they were finally allowed to proceed on their journey. (The duty of the officers is to inquire courteously for the papers, without arrest.)
- 4.
- Soon after the close of the term of July several of the young ladies connected with the girls’ school—2 teachers and 2 or 3 pupils—went to make a visit in Vizier-Keupru, ten hours’ distance from Marsovan. On reaching the place they were arrested by the police, and were subjected to a very humiliating delay and search, their clothing being stripped off from them in the presence of Turkish women, and examination made for some imaginary incendiary material.
- 5.
- More recently one of the missionaries having passed a few days at a mountain village, as a health resort, happened on his return to Marsovan to pass through this same town of Yizier-Keupru. He was there arrested and taken to headquarters of police. His passport was asked for, and when that was presented his traveling permit was demanded. This also being produced, it was pronounced unsatisfactory because it had not been specially registered for coming from Marsovan to Vizier-Keupru. As these places are in the same province (vilayet) and the same district (sandjak) it has never been customary to require such registration, and if there is a law requiring it, it is practically a dead letter. However, the missionary was compelled to pay a fine for the omission. Still the inventive genius of the chief of police provided another quibble, and he refused to let his victim go without bail. The missionary, though perfectly well known in the town, was obliged to get a native merchant to go bail for him. He afterward ascertained that in the bond thus given it was distinctly stipulated that for the space of one year from that date the said missionary should not go to any place where the Armenian question is prominent, nor go to America nor to certain other places. Had the missionary known of it at the time, he would not for a moment have assented to any such absurd limitation of his liberty, nor does he hold himself in any wise bound by it. Yet the incident shows the suspicious and unfriendly attitude of the Government, and the determination to identify the missionaries with the seditious movements of Armenians.
- 6.
- A few days later, two young men, one a senior in the college, and the other a recent graduate, also passing through the town of Yizier-Keupru, were arrested as suspicious characters, and when it was ascertained that they were connected with the college they were cast into irons and marched off to Amasia, the capital of the district (sandjak). The first five hours of the way, as far as the village of Kavza, they were compelled to walk. At that point a wagon was found and they were hustled into it and taken to Amasia. It is not known that any formal charge has been brought against them.
- 7.
- Among the persons arrested in Marsovan, on suspicion of complicity in insurrection, was the cook of the college. As soon as it appeared, in the course of his examination, that he was a Protestant and was connected with the college, he was at once heavily ironed and treated with barbarous severity. (The particular facts in his case are presented in a separate paper accompanying this.) It needs only be said that a violent effort was made to induce him to testify to the following points, viz, that there were arms, ammunition, bombs, etc., concealed at the college, that revolutionary committees were organized at the college, and that the missionaries were the chairmen of these committees.
- 8.
- The scandalous charge made last January in haste and excitement by the local governor (kaimakam) of Marsovan, that the incendiary placards were printed on a cyclostyle owned by one of the missionaries, was, only a few days ago, distinctly and deliberately repeated to that same missionary by the governor-general of the province of Sivas.
- 9.
- A point might very properly be made of the most inexcusable discourtesies heaped by this same governor-general upon the U. S. consul at Sivas, but it is taken for granted that the facts on this point are already well known to the authorities interested. It may not be out of place to remark that the two items last mentioned constituted insults to American citizens and to the American name, as such should not fail to demand ample reparation.
- 10.
- The last point to be mentioned in this connection forms the subject of another separate paper, and it is only necessary here to mention that the promise made at the time of the payment of the indemnity, that permission should be given for the rebuilding of the destroyed school building, has not been fulfilled. After the events of the winter and spring, the governor-general expressed himself as displeased that the missionaries applied to consulate and legation for redress instead of appealing to his excellency the governor-general himself. In this case of the rebuilding question they adopted the method he proposed and referred the matter to him, but weeks have passed and he has done nothing but accumulate obstacles, and there is no further virtue in patience. He threatened that if the missionaries persisted in appealing to American authorities the consequences would be bad for them, and they were very desirous to avoid a break with him, but it has become so evident that his [Page 677] purpose is to hamper and oppose them that they feel themselves obliged once more to call the attention of the legation to the above facts.
In the whole matter all that the missionaries desire is the fulfilment of promises already given. They desire the sincere favor of the Imperial Government, expressed in the proposed form of a firman, which should not only be put into the hands of the missionaries, but should be proclaimed to the provincial and local officials in such a way that they shall realize that its provisions are to be carried out. This involves the necessity of the entire removal of the unjust and painful suspicions harbored by the officials against the missionaries of complicity and seditious movements.
It has been the uniform practice of the missionaries, not only to he absolutely faithful in their loyalty to the Turkish Government, and to prescribe the most unreserved loyalty as a Christian duty of all their students, but also to have the whole administration and practice of the college, and of all their institutions, so open to the public as to allow of no suspicion on the part of anyone of anything secret or underhanded. Government officials have very often visited our institutions, and have always been received with courtesy and cordiality, and have been furnished every possible facility for inspection. A few days ago the missionaries called upon the local governor (kaimakam) of Marsovan, and in connection with the mention of the unfortunate rumors of the college having connection with seditious movements, they asked him as a personal favor to visit the premises himself, and so to satisfy himself of the falseness of such rumors. The invitation was given in all sincerity and was received by the kaimakam with the reply that for himself such evidence was entirety unnecessary, as he had perfect confidence in them. If this confidence could be shared in by all public officers our difficulties would be largely removed.