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Post by depletedreasons on Jan 31, 2008 1:48:54 GMT -5
The first genocidal act took place within days of the declaration of Crimea's annexation by Tsarina Catherine II. At the end of April 1783, several thousand Crimean Tatar intellectuals, military officers and clergy were rounded up in Karasubazar and killed. The whole early 1800s marked a period of genocide and ethnic cleansing targeting the Crimean Tatars and aiming at wiping out their culture, intellectual heritage as well as physical presence from the Crimean Peninsula.[2] Following the Crimean War (1853-1856), by the summer of 1860, the flight of Tatars from the terror in Crimea had turned the once flourishing peninsula into a "torched earth" landscape.[3]
What happened first to the Crimean Tatars, stroke next the Circassians in the 1860s.An unprecedented genocide and wave of terror aimed at emptying the whole Caucasus from Circassians. Russia started a mass expulsion in Circassia in 1860, with catastrophic consequences. Unlike the Tatars, who chose the exile and fled from the dar al-harb, the Circassians put up armed resistance, fortified their capital, Sochi, and made appeals to Turkey and the West to gain recognition for independent Circassia. After having forcibly halted the exodus of Crimean Tatars, in 1862, Russia launched terror campaign, massacres and targeted famine against Circassians, and by May 1864, the Circassian resistance movement had been crushed. In 1865, Russia spread the terror campaign against Chechens. By the 1880s, more than three million Circassians (up to 90 % of the population) as well as hundreds of thousands of Chechens, Abkhazians, Georgian Muslims and other Caucasians had been forced to emigrate to Turkey in the proportionally most massive ethnic cleansing of the time. The number of those directly killed has not been properly investigated. Suddenly, as in the case of the Crimean Tatars, Russia stopped the persecution of the remaining populations, and crushed the voluntary emigration movements by deporting the organizers to Siberia. This coincided with the launch of yet another campaign -–the pogroms and expulsions of Jews.[4]
The careful timing, planning and systematic organization of the ethnic cleansings and genocide against Crimean Tatars, Caucasian Muslims and Jews indicate that imperial Russia, even during the reigns of some monarchs, who have been considered as "more enlightened", did not follow a random strategy in Russia's southward expansion – the policy that Catherine II and her favorite Grigory Potyomkin had designed in order to "gain Constantinople and Jerusalem". Also regarding the history of the time, the systematic use of ethnic cleansing, pogroms and genocide as a means of imperial expansion and colonization marked the beginning of a novel and sinister trend in imperial politics. What was launched by Russia's brosok na yug, with their first victims being the Crimean Tatars and Circassians, was continued against the Jews, and the fashion was soon exported both west – targeting Jews across Europe since the 1870s – and south – leading to the atrocities against Armenians in the 1910s.users.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/2004/terrorism.htm
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Post by depletedreasons on Jan 31, 2008 1:55:28 GMT -5
History of Pogroms in RussiaBesides political parties, whole groups of people were branded by using provocations. In the 1800s, the most opportune ones for such branding were the Jews. People were commonly led to imagine that the Jews were planning a world revolution, and to prove this claim, the Ohrana falsified a document called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". This provocation is still inspiring anti-Semitic organisations around the world. (It must be remembered that in the 1800s the propaganda against the Jews, albeit it would sound absurd today, was taken seriously by large share of the population, in the same way that the anti-Muslim propaganda has spread today.) "A more serious by-product... was the outbreak, in spring 1881, of anti-Jewish pogroms, largely in the Ukraine. For these the Imperial authorities, including local police organisations, were partly to blame - if not for directly instigating such outrages, at least for conniving at them. ... Pogroms recurred over several years, but the nation as a whole seemed... relapsing into political apathy..." (Hingley, 1990, 70.) In Odessa, in October 1905, hundreds of Jews were massacred in a pogrom provoked by the Ohrana. This incident has been studied thoroughly by Robert Weinbert (Weinbert 1902, 248-289). In February of the same year, the same methods were used in Baku, in order to provoke the Muslims and the Armenians against each other. (Deutscher 1967, 68.)After the World War II, mainly the Americans have ensured that anti-Semitism does not reach the stage of fomenting pogroms. Russian economic dependency on United States support has effected a shift in the Jews' position as favourite target of hate-agitating allowing them to be replaced by the Caucasians, whom the Russians contemptuously call "the Blacks", and whom they accuse of all kinds of criminality.www.globalpolitician.com/2567-russia-chechnya
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Post by depletedreasons on Jan 31, 2008 1:56:52 GMT -5
The Circassian Genocide
By Antero Leitzinger A professor of the university of Munich (München), Karl Friedrich Neumann (not to be confused with the later Naumann), wrote in 1839 a book titled "Russland und die Tscherkessen" (published in the collection "Reisen und Länderbeschreibungen", vol. 19, in 1840). He describes, how Russia settled Christians to the parts of Armenia gained from Persia in 1828 - actually, Neumann had written about the issue already in 1834. (p. 68-69) Neumann considered this a very sound policy and predicted, that all Caucasus would become under firm Russian rule within the next decades. (p. 125) European powers would not intervene, because it was the destiny of all Europe to rule over the lands of Turks, Persians, and Hindus. (p. 129-130) Neumann was no racist, but he certainly advocated colonialism and was a Russophile in relation to the southern lands. He had a Darwinist approach many years before Charles Darwin or Herbert Spencer presented their ideas. This appears to have been more typical to 19th century German thought than any anti-Armenian sentiments. Neumann makes it clear in his very first words of the preface: "The European humanity is selected by divinity as ruler of the earth." Although Neumann respected the bravery of Circassians, he anticipated their destruction by Russia, because in a modern world, there would be no place for chivalrous "uncivilized" people. Neumann estimated the total number of Circassians, including the Kabardians and Abkhaz, at 1.5 million persons, or 300.000 families. (p. 67) Both the Russian figure of 300.000 persons, and the Circassian figure of four millions, were exaggerated. Neumann divided the Circassians into ten tribes: Notketch, Schapsuch, Abatsech, Pseduch, Ubich, Hatiokech, Kemkuich, Abasech, Lenelnich, Kubertech (in German transliteration). They formed a loose confederation very much like old Switzerland, with democratic majority votes deciding the affairs of villages. Their princes had no privileges, and were regarded only as military commanders. Women were more free than anywhere in the Orient. There was no written law, and death penalties were unknown. Many Circassians were Muslims, but there were also Christians and pagans, all completely tolerated. Russian prisoners-of-war were used as slaves, but if they were of Polish origin, they were regarded as guests. Therefore, Poles recruited in the Russian army, deserted en masse at every opportunity, and even Russians often declared themselves to be Poles. (p. 123) Slavery as such included no shame. Circassians used to sell their own family members as slaves to Turkey and Persia, and many went to slavery voluntarily, returning later on back home as rich and free men. (p. 124) This system could be compared to the Gastarbeiter emigration from Turkey since the 1960s. We should also remember, that in those times, slavery or serfdom existed in Romania and Russia as well. The Circassians had been fighting against Russia already for forty years when appealing to the courts of Europe in a "Declaration of Independence": "But now we hear to our deepest humiliation, that our land counts as a part of the Russian empire on all maps published in Europe... that Russia, finally, declares in the West, that Circassians are their slaves, horrible bandits..." (p. 140-141) The fight continued for two more full decades, until a national Circassian government was set up in Sochi. In 1862, Russia began the final invasion, annihilation and expulsion, as predicted by Neumann well in advance. According to Kemal H. Karpat, "Ottoman population 1830-1914" (Madison 1985), "Beginning in 1862, and continuing through the first decade of the twentieth century, more than 3 million people of Caucasian stock, often referred collectively as Cerkes (Circassians), were forced by the Russians to leave their ancestral lands..." (p. 27) Salaheddin Bey mentioned, in 1867, a total of 1.008.000 refugees from the Caucasus and Crimea, of whom 595.000 were initially settled in the Balkans. (p. 27) Half a million followed by 1879, and another half a million until 1914. (p. 69) Most of them were Circassians, although there were Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and other Muslim people among them. Hundreds of thousands Circassians perished on their way. Neumann’s estimate of 1.5 million Circassians corresponds to 1/30 ethnic Russians, or 1/3 Czechs, or 3/4 Slovaks. (p. 66) According to Neumann, there were over two million Armenians in the world. (p. 69) Now, according to the Soviet census of 1989, the number of Russians has increased to 145 millions, whereof 1/30 would be almost five millions. There are 10 million Czechs and 5 million Slovaks, which would lead us to assume that there should be over 3 million Circassians. Armenia alone has a population of over 3 million Armenians, despite of the past ordeals; 2 million Armenians live elsewhere. The number of Czechs, Slovaks, and Armenians has more than doubled in 150 years, while the number of Russians has tripled; but where are the missing millions of Circassians? "The Encyclopaedia Britannica", 11th edition (Cambridge 1911), divided the Armenian population equally between Russia and Turkey (little over a million in each empire), and numbered 216.950 Circassians (including Abkhaz etc.) in Russia. Again we must conclude, that about 1.5 million Circassians had been massacred or deported. This disaster exceeded both absolutely and proportionally whatever fell upon Armenians in 1915. Was it intentional? Yes. Was it ideological? Yes. The conquest and Christian colonization of the Middle East was expected not only by Germans, but by most Europeans during the 19th century, and the expulsion of Muslims from Europe was considered a historical necessity. Russia had practicized massacres and mass deportations in the Crimea and Caucasus, and "ethnically cleansed" Circassia specially in 1862-1864. During that period, Panslavists like Mikhail Katkov provided the Russian public with nationalistic excuses for what had started as imperial ambition ("Third Rome") and strategic interests ("Access to sea"). A vicious cycle was created and increased the stakes at both frontiers: the Caucasus, and the Balkans. Circassian refugees settled in the Balkans were provoked to commit the "Bulgarian atrocities", that inspired some of the Armenian revolutionaries. After the Balkan Wars, Muslim refugees were roaming in Anatolia, thus spreading terror, and hostility. This was exploited by Russia, at the cost of many innocent Armenians. The massacres of 1915 were a tip of the iceberg - the part best visible for Europeans, who had been actively seeking and expecting horror news to justify anti-Muslim prejudice, and to prevent interventions on behalf of Turkey, as had happened in the Crimean War of the 1850s.Was it a genocide? That depends on the definition. Rather than of separate, selectively researched genocides, we should speak of*general genocidal tendency that affected many - both Muslim and Christian - people on a wide scene between 1856 and 1956, continuing in post-Soviet Russia until today. users.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/issue2/circass.htm
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Post by depletedreasons on Jan 31, 2008 2:16:53 GMT -5
The Reports and the TestimoniesAbout Russian - Circassian War and the Circassian Genocide Grand Duke Michael: “We wouldn’t leave our duties thinking that Mountaineers are not surrendering. To wipe out the half, the other half needed to be destroyed.” Caucasia Armies General Staff Head Milyutin: “ We should send the Mountaineers by force to the places we want. If we need, we should deport/exile them to Don region. Our main goal is to settle Russians in the regions on the skirts of Caucasian Mountains. But we shouldn’t let the Mountaineers know about this.”
In the letter Earl Yevdokimov sent to the Ministry of War in October 1863 he said: “Now we have to clean the coastal strip as part of our plan for the conquest of West Caucasia” (from the State History Archives).Russian Historian Sulujiyen: “We wouldn’t abandon our cause just because Mountaineers are not surrendering. Half of them needed to be crashed in order to take their weapons. Many tribes were totally annihilated during the bloody war. In addition, many mothers were killing their kids in order not to give them to us.”Russian Historian Zaharyan: “Circassians do not like us. We exiled them from their free meadowlands. We destroyed their houses and many tribes were totally destructed.”Russian Historian Y.D. Felisin: “ This was a real and brutal war. Hundreds of Circassian villages were set on fire. We let our horses run over their crops and gardens to destroy them, in the end it turned into a ruin.”Earl Lev Tolstoy: “To enter the villages in the darkness became our usual thing. Russian soldiers were entering the houses one by one under the darkness of the night. This and following scenes were such horror scenes that none of the reporters were courageous enough to report them.” From the Oppositional group N. N. Rayevski: “The things we did in Caucasia were very similar to the negative things that Spaniards did during the war in American lands. I wish God almighty would not leave any blood marks in Russian history.”
In the congratulating message Czar II. Alexander sent to Earl Yevdokimov: [/b] “You cleaned up and destroyed the rebellious autochthon nations in West Caucasia in the last 3 years. We can recover the cost of this long bloody war from this fertile land in a very short time.”
“A Russian detachment having captured the village of Toobah on the Soobashi river, inhabited by about a hundred Abadzekh (a tribe of Circassians), and after these had surrendered themselves prisoners, they were all massacred by the Russian Troops. Among the victims were two women in an advanced state of pregnancy and five children. The detachment is question belongs to Count Evdokimoff’s (Yevdokimov) Army, and is said to have advanced from the Pshish valley. As the Russian troops gain ground on the Coast, the natives are not allowed to remain there on any terms, but are compelled either to transfer themselves to the plains of the Kouban or emigrate to Turkey” (F.O. 9-424, no 2, Dickson to Russell, Soukoum Kale,17 March 1864). Jan Karol: “ The Russian conquest of Caucasia is a terrible example of our barbarian times. It took 60 years of military terror and massacre to break the resistance of the Caucasian Mountaineers.”Hakhurat S.Y.- Lichkov L.S in their book entitled Adygheya: “Czarist administration deported/exiled hundreds of thousands of Circassians from their homeland Caucasia. They expelled Mountaineer nations from their homeland by way of a bloody war.”Grand Duke Michael: At the end of the war, when Grand Duke Michael came to Caucasia, Circassian Elders visited him and they said that they were defeated, and they demanded to be allowed to live in their lands accepting Russian administration. The answer Grand Duke Michael gave was: “I give you a month. In one month, you either go to the land that will be shown to you beyond Kuban, or you go to the land of the Ottoman Empire. The villagers and mountaineers who are not leaving for the coastal region in one month will be treated as prisoners of war.” Russian St. Petersburg Newspaper: “They started escaping through the coasts which were immortalized by their resistance and defence. There is no more Circassia. Our soldiers will clean out the remainders in the mountains very soon and the war will be over in a short time.”Dekabrist Lorer: “Zass, near his encampment, on top of a specially prepared small hill, fixed Circassian heads on top of lances, with their beards flying in the air. It was very disturbing to see this scene. One day Zass, agreed to remove the heads from the lances after the request of a guest lady. We were also his guests at the time. When I entered the study room of the General, I was struck by a strong, disgusting smell. Smiling, Zass told us that there were boxes in which the heads were placed under his bed. Then he pulled a big box in which there were couple big-eyed, horribly looking heads. I asked him why he keeps them there. He replied: “I boil them, clean them, and send them to my professor friends in Berlin for the study of anatomy”.
Russian-Kazakh women were walking in the battlefields and cutting the heads of Circassian men, after the war is over. Originally German, General Zass was paying them a good amount of money for doing that. Until he was warned by his supervisors to give up this, Zass continued to boil, clean and send many heads to Berlin.General Zass Tercüman-İ; Ahval ve Tasvir-i Efkar Newspapers: “Russians destroyed all of Caucasia. They set the villages on fire. They were exiling the autochthon people from their homelands after the war.” French reporter A. Fonvill: “Sailors were acquisitive. They were letting 200-300 people in to the ships that have a capacity of 50-60. The people left with a little bread and water. In 5-6 days these were all consumed and then they caught epidemic illnesses from starvation, they were dying in the way to Ottoman Empire, and those who die were dumped into the sea. The ship that started the trip with 600 people ended up with only 370 people alive.” The Ubykh and Fighett tribes are… fast embarking for Trabzon. In fact, after their land had been laid waste by fire and sword, migration to Turkey is the only alternative allowed to these mountaineers who refuse to transfer themselves to the Kouban steppes and contribute periodically to the militia (F.O. 881-1259, Dickson to Russell, Soukoum Kale, 13 April 1864) Most of the Abkhaz have been plundered of everything by the Russians before embarking and have barely been allowed to bring with them the strict necessities of life for a short period. In many villages, and especially in the district of Zibeldah, their houses have been wantonly burnt by the Cossak soldiery and their cattle and other property forcibl taken away or sold under compulsion to Russian traders at a nominal price. (F.O. 97-424, # 13, Palgrave to Stanley, Trabzon, 16 May 1867)Polish Colonel Teophil Lapinsky: “The situation of the exiled people was turning into a catastrophe. Hunger and epidemics were at their peak. The group who came to Trabzon decreased from 100,000 to 70,000 people. 70,000 people arrived at Samsun. The dead toll per day was about 500 people. This number was about 400 in Trabzon. 300 people in Gerede Camp, the daily death toll in Akcakale and Saridere is about 120-150 people. Italian Dr. Barozzi in his report makes the following important note: People are trying to stay alive for long time with herbs, plant roots and bread crumbs.”Russian researcher A. P. Berge: I will never forget the 17,000 people I saw at the Novorossisk Bay. I am sure those who saw their situation couldn’t bear it and would definitely collapse no matter what religion they belonged to, Christians, Muslims, or atheists. In the cold winter, in the snow, without a house, without food, and without any proper clothing, these people were in the hands of typhoid, typhus and chicken pox diseases. The babies were searching for milk in their mother’s dead body. This terrible black page in the Russian history caused great harm to the Adygean history. The exile caused an interruption in the history of social, economic and cultural developments and in the process of becoming one political union/confederation.”English Delegate Earl Napiyer: “Slavs and other Christians were being settled in the lands that is emptied from Circassians.”English Consul Gifford Palgrave: “I traveled through all of Abkhazia on the day of April 17th, 1867. It is very painful to witness the destruction of the land of Abkhazia and to witness the annihilation of Abkhazian people whose only guilt is to be non-Russian.”English Consul R.H. Lang: “When 2718 people who left from Samsun to come to Cyprus arrived, 853 of them were dead and the others were not very different from being dead. The daily dead toll is about 30-50.” From the speech of the English Member of Parliament M. Anstey: “I blame Lord Palmerston for betrayal of Circassia, which is made English-adherent and which is to have trading relations with England. You also betrayed England by surrendering Independent North Caucasia to Russia while you knew about our interests in India.” 8 Years later while Lord Palmerston was talking at the same parliament: “Dear Lords, it is true that we left Circassians alone with their terrible misfortune. Yet we wanted help from them and we used them.”Pinson: “The death percentage of Circassians along the Black Sea coasts is about 50%. 53,000 people died just in Trabzon alone. We don’t know how many ships, which are “Floating graves” had sunk. The number of families exiled from Caucasia to Balkan region is about 70,000. Edirne: 6.000, Silistre-Vidin: 13.000, Niche - Sofia: 12.000, Dobruca-Kosovo-Pristina-Svista: 42.000 families. Total about 350.000 people. Death percentage is less and is about 15-20%.”Y. Abramov in his book entitled Caucasian Mountaineers: “There are no words to describe the situation of the Mountaineers in those days. Thousands of them died in the roads, thousands of them died due to illness and hunger. The coastal regions were full with people who are dead or on the verge of dying. The babies who are searching for milk in their mother’s cold dead body, mothers who didn’t leave their kids from their laps even they are already dead from cold, and people who are dead while they got closer just to keep warm, are examples of the scenes that were normal in the coasts of the Black Sea.” Russian I. Dzarov : “Half of those who left to go to Ottoman Empire died before they reached there. Such a state of wretchedness is rare in the history of the humankind.”
#Left - Destruction of Kabardian villages Feb.,27, 1836 #Right - Destruction of Abadzekh villages, Jan., 25, 1836 #Center - Prochnookopskaya Fortress, Place of Residence of General Zass *** ADDRESS OF THE CIRCASSIAN DEPUTIES (HADJI HAYDEN HASSAN and KUSTAR OGLI ISMAEL) TO THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND, LONDON, 26 AUGUST 1862 (published in Supplement to the FREE PRESS, Journal of the Foreign Affairs Committees) January 7, 1863 “As Your Majesty is aware, since the world existed, no nation has attempted to conquer our country. Russia only some time ago, under the pretence that she got our country by treaty from the Ottoman Government, invaded us with an overwhelming force, and began against us a war of extermination, which she has waged for forty years, and which she is still waging, at the cost of many thousands of human lives.
The Ottoman Government, never having possessed our country, had no right whatever to give us over to the Russians. There is no other affinity between us and the Ottomans than the similarity of creed and faith which makes us both look upon the Sultan as the successor of our Prophet.
The tyranny of the Russians was not confined to capturing our cattle, burning our dwellings, and temples, and other unheard-of atrocities, but in order to starve us on the mountains they destroyed all our growing crops in the plain, and captured our land. In fact, they have treated us in an unbearable and barbarous manner, unprecedented in the annals of war. Driven to despair, we resolved to make a last firm stand against our enemies with all the energy we possessed, and the war was carried on with fresh vigour, eight months ago, causing the sacrifice of twenty-five thousand human lives, on both sides, and an immense destruction of property. While we are on one side repelling our enemies, and on the other trying to improve the government of our country, Russia by brute force, is trying to conquer us; on the neutral Black Sea she is capturing, whenever she can, every ship carrying any of our countrymen, so that we have no home on land, no means of traveling or refuge by sea. Still we would rather die than submit to the yoke of Russia. If we were to emigrate, abandoning our homes, for ages protected by our forefathers, who shed their blood for them, our poverty would prove a great obstacle to our doing so; in fact, how could we take away our own wives and children, and the widows, orphans, and helpless relations of those slain in this war? Such an undertaking would decimate the emigrants, and blot it\out for ever our Circassian name from the face of the earth.” OUTRAGE ON THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND BY THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT IN THE CAUCASUS, THE FREE PRESS, Journal of the Foreign Affairs Committees. June 3, 1863“A scene of cannibalism has been enacted at the village of Hafifa in the country of the Chapsoughs. The men of that village were at the frontier for the service of the outposts. Taking advantage of their absence, the soldiers of the Czar fell on the rest of the population, which was defenseless, and killed, burnt, and pillage them. Among the number of the victims were eighteen old women, eight children, and six old men. On the back of one of the slaughtered women there was left a board bearing these words: ‘Go and complain to the Kraalitza (Queen) of England, to whom your Deputies went to demand assistance”. On the body of a little boy was found this inscription: ‘Remain here instead of going to sell yourself to your protectors, the Turks’. Finally, on the corpse of an old man, the eyes of which had been put out, was read: ‘Go and rejoin your Deputies, you will find some good oculists at Paris” – Courier d’OrientLETTER FROM CIRCASSIANS TO DAOUD BEY (DAVID URQUHART): THE FREE PRESS, Journal of the Foreign Affairs Committees. December 2, 1863 “The Russians, jeering and deriding us, have begun to be more violent and oppressive, and, hearing of the arrival of the above things, they pushed forward some troops, and surrounded two hundred houses belonging to our people, and even also to our neighbours, by night, and killed the men and took the women and children prisoners; and the number of persons they killed amounted to one thousand and eighty, and those whom they took prisoners to one thousand three hundred.”
THE FREE PRESS, Journal of the Foreign Affairs Committees. 3 August, 1864"THE EXPULSION OF THE CIRCASSIANS The following letter having been refused insertion in the TIMES, we make room for it, as one of the documents connected with the operations of the Circassian Committee: Reception of the Circassians in Turkey, Constantinople, July 7, 1864 My Dear Sir,
I confidently hope that my letters to you and Viscount Stratford De Redcliffe safely and in due time, reached their destination, as well as the copy of the documents therein enclosed. I was anxious – knowing how strong an impression Dr. Barozzi’s official report from Samsoun had produced throughout England – to forward the one he presented, on his return from his sanitary mission, to the Board of Health; convinced as I am that the facts he has brought to light are such as not only to keep up, but increase tenfold, the interest displayed in favour of the Circassian exiles.
I deeply regret, however… that the author of this able report should have made himself liable in a most serious reproach; that of having, when enumerating the various causes which engendered the diseases which have occasioned and still continue to occasion the most awful mortality, among the Circassians, not said one word concerning the principal among these causes – i.e., the barbarous treatment these exiles met with on the part of the Russian military authorities previously to their embarkation for Turkey.
The limits of a letter do not permit me to unfold the tale of horrors perpetuated under the auspices of the Grand Duke Mikhail, in Circassia, by Generals Balibitch and Eudikimoff. The narrative of the sufferings its inhabitants had to undergo after the conquest of the country by Russia, might fill several volumes. The question to be dealt with , at present, is, whether the measures adopted by the Russian Generals to accomplish the ‘pacification’ of the conquered provinces, were not calculated to occasion the diseases which have already destroyed upwards of two hundred thousand of their inhabitants, and continue yet to decimate the ranks of the survivors, after finding a refuge in Turkey?
These measures of pacification were as follows: -- Wheresoever the Russians made themselves masters of a district, the principal inhabitants were summoned to present themselves before the commander of the troops, and were told by him that the Emperor, instead of consenting to the general extermination they had merited, graciously ordered the evacuation of their country and left to their own judgment the alternative of either migrating with their families to the steppes beyond the Kouban, where lands would be allotted to them; or of taking their departure for Turkey. Three days, they were told, were granted to them to come to a decision, and to make preparations for the journey. On the fourth day fire was set to their dwellings, and their inhabitants who had manifested the intention of seeking an asylum in Turkey, were forthwith marched down to the nearest point of the coast. On their reaching the spot, a military cordon surrounded the encampment to prevent any further communication with the interior. The men-of-war and other sailing ships – which as it is officially stated in Lord Napier’s dispatch, had been, at the Grand Duke Michael’s request, placed at his entire disposal, in order to facilitate the Circassian emigration – having never existed but on paper, the thousands of individuals congregated on the beach were doomed to remain there exposed to the inclemency of the elements for weeks and months, waiting for the providential arrival of a vessel from Turkey. The scanty supply of provisions they had brought with them, once exhausted, hunger drove them to have recourse for subsistence to roots and the bark of trees within their reach. Hundreds of women and children died from either starvation or from the effects of a food so noxious to the constitution; for in no instance was the slightest assistance afforded by the Russian authorities. It stands to reason that the mortality grew from day to day at the most frightful rate, and that the survivors were, at the moment of their embarkation, looking more like walking specters than living beings. Of course, when a mass of individuals, reduced to so sad a condition, congregates on board a vessel hardly capable of carrying one-tenth of their number, and sea-water is the only liquid within their reach, the inevitable consequence will be an awful increase of mortality, and contagion will spread like wildfire. It is a matter of surprise that they did not all die to a man before reaching the encampment prepared for their reception”
T. Millengen
ENCLOSURE SUMMARY OF THE INTELLIGENCE RECEIVED DURING THE WEEK AT THE BOARD OF HEALTH OFFICEJuly 1st – A Turkish cutter arrive din port, from Heraclea, with 80 Circassian recruits. July 2nd – The Taif came from Samsoun, with 2200 Circassians; 30 sick, 11 deaths. This steam-frigate towed in two vessels; the first with 700, the second with 535 passengers, of whom 150 sick – 44 deaths. Sent down to Gallipoli, where they are to settle. The Tounah, from Trebisond, with 1600 passengers, of whom 60 died at sea, and 62 sick… A ship towed in by the Tounah had 550 passengers, 15 of whom died at sea, 35 sick. The Shahper from Trebisond,750 passengers. July 5th – The Malakoff with 1468 passengers, 34 deaths, 38 sick. July 6th – A telegram from Gallipoli announces the landing of 3340 Circassians. The total of the immigrants hitherto landed on various points of the coast of the Sea of Marmora, 21,703. Letter dated Samsoun 30th ult., report 100,000 immigrants, and 300 deaths daily. Fresh arrivals from Circassia balance the departures. Reports from Batoom, 26th ult., announce the arrival of 8500 Circassians from Ardilar. June 30th, Varna. 530 Circassian passengers from Theodosia. A report from Widdin says that the 35,000 emigrants had been distributed between Zohmpalanka, Sofia, and Nich, 664 deaths after their departure from Widdin. They spread typhus and small-pox wherever they settle. Nearly 200 men from the crews of Turkish vessels which convey the emigrants, have had the typhus fever, and have been sent to the Naval hospital. This circumstance does not deter the Government from sending as before the vessels appointed to transport the immigrants. *** The response of Shutsejuko Tseyko to Czar II. Alexander (Czar II. Alexander came to Caucasia in 1861, and he stipulated Circassians to surrender without any resistance and come down from mountain areas to low lands): “May be Caucasia will be Russian, but as long as there is blood flowing in Circassians vessels, they won’t be slaves of Russian Czar and we won’t surrender our homeland as long as we live. Dying is better than living as slaves. We won’t let our ancestor’s great warrior glory be stained. “Ye tl’ın Ye tl’en - Either be a hero, or die” www.circassianworld.com/reports.html
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Post by depletedreasons on Jan 31, 2008 2:35:37 GMT -5
Armenian crime amnesia?Capt. Emory Niles and Arthur Sutherland, on an official 1919 U.S. mission to eastern Anatolia, reported: "In the entire region from Bitlis through Van to Bayezit, we were informed that the damage and destruction had been done by the Armenians, who, after the Russians retired, remained in occupation of the country and who, when the Turkish army advanced, destroyed everything belonging to the Musulmans. Moreover, the Armenians are accused of having committed murder, rape, arson and horrible atrocities of every description upon the Musulman population. At first, we were most incredulous of these stories, but we finally came to believe them, since the testimony was absolutely unanimous and was corroborated by material evidence. For instance, the only quarters left at all intact in the cities of Bitlis and Van are Armenian quarters ... while the Musulman quarters were completely destroyed."
Niles and Sutherland were fortified by American and German missionaries on the spot in Van. American Clarence Ussher reported that Armenians put the Turkish men "to death," and, for days, "They burned and murdered." A German missionary recalled that, "The memory of these entirely helpless Turkish women, defeated and at the mercy of the [Armenians] belongs to the saddest recollections from that time."
A March 23, 1920, letter of Col. Charles Furlong, an Army intelligence officer and U.S. Delegate to the Paris Peace Conference, to President Woodrow Wilson elaborated: "We hear much, both truth and gross exaggeration of Turkish massacres of Armenians, but little or nothing of the Armenian massacres of Turks. ... The recent so-called Marash massacres [of Armenians] have not been substantiated. In fact, in the minds of many who are familiar with the situation, there is a grave question whether it was not the Turk who suffered at the hands of the Armenian and French armed contingents which were known to be occupying that city and vicinity. ... Our opportunity to gain the esteem and respect of the Muslim world ... will depend much on whether America hears Turkey's untrammeled voice and evidence which she has never succeeded in placing before the Court of Nations."www.washingtontimes.com/article/20071016/COMMENTARY02/110160004
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