Rummel R.J., Never Again 5 Genoc

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

desk. He took a big sip of his lukewarm tea, kissed two of his fingers
and touched Emma s face in her picture, then, mug in hand, he sat back
down at his desk. He read the last paragraph of what he had written,
then picked a fresh #1 pencil from his collection and continued writing
from that point.
The Young Turks first goal was the total elimination of Armenians
from Turkey by extermination. Their second goal was to generate funds
from seized Armenian assets to provide homes for Moslem refugees
flooding in from lost Turkish territory. And third, they wanted to give
this war on their own people the appearance of legality.
With all Armenian men dead or drafted into the army to be killed
later, those remaining can hardly offer much resistance. Armenian
families have been reduced to women and children, the very old, and
the enfeebled. Again the town crier goes to work as he did when mar-
shalling the males together, ordering all remaining Armenians to
prepare for relocation to some unknown district. The only women ex-
empt are those who convert to Islam, find Turkish husbands to ratify
the conversion by marriage, and turn their children over to a govern-
ment orphanage that will bring them up as Moslems.
Genocide Never Again 95
While the authorities sometimes carry out relocations with little
warning, they usually allow a week or so for Armenian women and
elderly people to settle their affairs. This is a farce. The Turks forbid
these frantic Armenians from selling their real property or livestock,
and as soon as the women are gone, officials usually give the property
to Moslem immigrants. The Armenians are forced to sell most of their
family property for virtually nothing, often to government officials. But
the authorities are not without mercy; they often hire or requisition ox-
carts and drivers to carry the Armenians remaining belongings, one
cart per family.
The Turks then gather Armenian families into convoys of as few as
two hundred or as many as four thousand women, children, and old
people and, guarding them with soldiers and police, set their relocation
into motion. Within a few days or even hours of starting, however, the
carters refuse to go farther and turn back, leaving the families to carry
what they can.
The already pitiful deportees now face, by design, several enemies.
One is nature itself. Poorly protected against the weather, the deportees
often struggle over rough country whose wells and springs are far apart.
Then there are the Turk guards supposedly protecting the convoys,
but instead prey upon them, sometimes even forbidding their charges to
drink water when they come to wells or streams. Impatient to end their
task, they first kill the stragglers and those who fall by the wayside, and
then resort to the outright massacre of those who have not yet died of
hunger, thirst, disease, or exposure.
Moslem villagers are another enemy. Forewarned about approach-
ing convoys and sometimes commanded to appear with weapons, they
plunder the convoys that straggle through their villages, raping and kill-
ing at will. After being repeatedly raped, some of the prettier Armenian
girls survive only because they are forced into a Moslem harem.
Some convoys have to make their way across mountains. Invited by
messengers to have fun, Kurdish tribes swooped down on these con-
voys to do their own style of looting, raping, and killing, carrying off
whichever women please their eyes.
Finally, the Turks invite brigands, and former Moslem prisoners re-
leased for the purpose, to attack the convoys. With the connivance of
the guards, they do so enthusiastically.
In some cases the authorities are impatient with this process and
simply use their troops to slaughter a whole convoy. In one case, they
deployed the army s 86th Cavalry Brigade, ostensibly to keep order
among the Kurds. Instead, it attacked large convoys from Erzindjan
96
R. J. Rummel
containing about half the Armenian population, stripped the deportees
of their clothes, and led them naked to Kemakh Gorge, where they
were either bayoneted first or thrown alive into the gorge. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Tematy