WAR CRIMES AND ATROCITIES (True Crime) (10 page)

The Germans tried to defend themselves by claiming that the
Lusitania
was not only armed, but that it was also carrying war munitions for the destruction of German soldiers. Although the first claim was not true, the second was proved many years later when some secret British documents were intercepted.

On the one hand the Americans believed that the Germans had violated the rights of humanity by attacking the
Lusitania
without giving any warning. On the other hand, the Germans retaliated by saying that they believed the British deliberately exposed the liner by going slowly in dangerous waters so that it could be easily destroyed. They said it was a plot on behalf of the British in an effort to get the Americans involved in the war.

The political fallout was immediate, and to placate the enraged Americans, the Germans gave an informal assurance to President Wilson that there would not be a repeat of the
Lusitania
disaster. The Germans abandoned their ‘sink on sight’ policy on 18 September, 1915, but this was to be a fairly short-lived solution, because it was resumed on 1 February, 1917.

Armenian Genocide

1915

The most single horrific act committed during World War I was the suffering of the Armenian people, which became known as the Armenian Genocide. It was an atrocity of enormous magnitude, wiping out over one and a half million Armenians out of a total of two and a half million living in the Ottoman Empire.

The decision to carry out the genocide against the Armenian people was made by the political party that was in power at the time in the Ottoman Empire. The once-powerful Ottoman Empire was ruled by the Turks, who had already conquered lands extending across West Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe. The main government of the Ottoman was centred in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and was ruled by a sultan who had supreme power. The Turks practised Islam, while the Armenians were Christians who had lived in the southern Caucasus region for over 3,000 years. They were the largest non-Muslim population in the Ottoman Empire, and they lived as second-class citizens, who were subjected to many legal restrictions. Although the two classes had lived side by side for many years, by the 19th century the Ottoman Empire was in serious decline and this brought with it internal pressures that created ethnic tension.

The Turks started to see the Armenians as a threat, having never shared power in their country with any minority, and the government decided to take the matter into their own hands. During the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876–1909), a series of massacres took place, with the intention of frightening the Armenians into take a back seat. In this first campaign of killing, around 200,000 Armenians lost their lives, but this was just a harbinger of the full-scale genocide that was to take place two decades later.

THE
 ‘
YOUNG
 
TURKS
’

In 1908, a group of modern-minded young officers – the ‘Young Turks’ – toppled the Ottoman sultan. At first the Armenians welcomed the new regime, believing that it was a progression from the old Ottoman dictatorship. Little did they realize how this new political party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) was to change their lives forever.

The CUP was quickly taken over by a small group of fanatical nationalists, led by the triumvirate of Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha and Talat Pasha. Wanting to eradicate any threat of political control by the Armenians, they started to plot the extermination of not just a few, but the entire population, who they saw as potentially traitorous.

When World War I broke out, the CUP steered Istanbul towards closer military and diplomatic relations with Germany and Austria–Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire became part of the Triple Alliance. The Alliance declared war against Russia and its allies Great Britain and France, and they used this guise to implement their abhorrent plan. Under the cover of war the CUP started to eradicate Armenians from Turkey and neighbouring countries, with the sole purpose of creating a new Turk empire.

One of the CUP’s leading visionaries, Dr Nazim, spoke out at a meeting of the Central Committee in February 1915:

. . . if this purge is not general and final, it will inevitably lead to problems. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to eliminate the Armenian people in its entirety, so that there is no further Armenian on 

this earth and the very concept of Armenia is extinguished. We are now at war. We shall never have a more suitable opportunity than this.

(as quoted in g. s. graber’s caravans to oblivion: the armenian genocide)

THE SLAUGHTER BEGINS

The genocide began on 24 April, 1915, and was organized by a special organization (
Teshkilati Mahsusa
), set up by the CUP. They organized special ‘butcher battalions’, which were made up of violent criminals who were prematurely released from prison for the sole purpose of carrying out the genocide. The genocide was done in a systematic fashion and was well thought out beforehand. The first action they took was to round up any political and intellectual leaders who might possibly be effective in stopping the planned genocide. Around 600 people of distinction, all males, were taken from Istanbul and slaughtered.

The next tactic that the CUP employed was to disarm any Armenians serving in the army and turn them into nothing more than labourers. Instead of serving their country as soldiers, these men were stripped of their arms and uniforms and were treated like simple pack animals. They were made to carry heavy, army supplies on their backs and forced into the mountains of the Caucasus. They grew weak under the weight of their burdens, and as they stumbled and fell they were forced on by the whips and bayonets of the Turks. They had to sleep out in the open, laying on the bare ground in thick snow. With only meagre rations, the Armenians soon fell sick and those that were unable to carry on were simply left to die. Those that did make it to their destination were usually shot, sometimes being forced to dig their own graves before meeting their fate.

The CUP’s main intention was to slaughter any able-bodied Armenian male who would have been able to produce a new generation of Armenians. By removing these men from their cities, villages and places of work, it reduced the remaining community to near helplessness, leaving the way open for the next part of their plan. The authorities then turned their attention to the remaining male Armenian population. They were told that they were being deported to supposed ‘safe havens’, but this was merely a ploy to lead the men to their death.

As the caravans left the villages and cities, many of the young men were separated from their families, tied together in small groups, led to the outskirts and then shot. Public hangings without any form of trial were a regular occurrence. When the caravans eventually reached Angora, all the remaining Armenian men between the ages of 15 and 70 were arrested, tied together in groups of four and were told to walk down the road towards Caesarea. After a few hours of walking they reached a secluded valley, where they decided to stop for a rest, little realizing that they were about to be ambushed by a mob of Turkish peasants. They fell upon them using clubs, hammers, axes, in fact anything they could lay their hands on, inflicting the most agonizing deaths. The horribly mutilated bodies were simply left on the ground to be preyed upon by wild animals. In this way, the CUP disposed of all the young Armenians who they considered might have been a threat to their future rule.

By the time the caravans moved again, they only consisted of women, children and old men, little realizing what fate lay ahead for them.

GENDERCIDE AGAINST ARMENIAN WOMEN

The reports of what happened to those women, children and elderly people give rise to some of the most atrocious scenes of torture and carnage in the history of time. Although a few of the women were offered positions as slaves in the Turkish homes if they converted to Islam, it is generally thought that only about 1,000 actually accepted. The remainder were driven from their homes at the point of the Turkish bayonets, running the gauntlet between vicious soldiers and local tribespeople. Anyone who lagged behind was simply killed and left on the road, or pushed over a precipice to their death.

Every single caravan had a continuous battle not only against the soldiers, but the gendarmes, convicts who had been released from jail, and the local Turkish tribes. They had no strong, virile men to protect them, as the Turks had already made sure that they were out of the way, and so the weak were left to fend for themselves. Any of the Armenians who did manage to escape usually didn’t get far before they were set upon, helpless without any form of weapon to defend themselves. Those that were not killed by the bayonet were ravaged by hunger and thirst, adding to their torment. The hot sun of the desert shrivelled the skin on their scantily clad bodies, and after several days of travelling, the once healthy Armenians were nothing more than pathetic skeletons.

The end result was an almost total extermination of the Armenian population, with only about 150 women and children reaching their final destination. They arrived naked, having had their clothes ripped from their bodies as they travelled. Already in an emaciated state, most didn’t survive the squalid camps that had been set up in Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq), as the spread of disease was rampant.

Although the majority of the massacres took place in 1915, the genocide continued until the end of World War I in 1918.

THE
 
AFTERMATH

Turkey’s final defeat at the end of World War I, and the subsequent collapse of the Ottoman Empire, gave the surviving Armenians a chance to try and rebuild their nation. In 1918 an independent Republic of Armenia was declared, giving them back some of the pride that had been stripped by the evil CUP. For several decades the rest of the world was unaware of the horrors inflicted on the Armenian people, and for a long time was overshadowed by the Nazi’s genocide of the Jewish race in World War II. Turkish governments have maintained a constant silence on the subject, which has been sustained by lying, deliberately forged propaganda and bribes.

The day that it all began was 24 April, and Armenians living around the world commemorate the genocide at the site of memorials raised by the survivors, despite the fact that several governments do not officially recognize the genocide ever took place.

Amritsar Massacre

1919

The Amritsar Massacre, also known as the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, took place in the city of Amritsar in Punjab, in the northern part of India. In the years following the end of World War I, India was still reeling from the effects of British rule. Indian soldiers who had returned as heroes from the front line found themselves once again being treated as natives. The actual issue that caused the sinister, if not extraordinary, event in the Jallianwala Bagh garden, was the government’s passing of the Rowlatt Acts in March 1919. The Acts were introduced to try and curb the growing violence that was breaking out in various parts of India, in particular the Punjab. They allowed the government of India to arrest known agitators without a formal trial, giving judges the right to sentence without a jury. The Acts came just after the end of World War I, in a time of peace, when many Indians were hopeful of some form of self-government.

It soon became obvious that the British government had no such intention of relaxing its hold on India. When the Acts were actually passed, the leader of the Indian National Congress, Bal Tilak, was away in London, leaving the way open for Mahatma Gandhi to emerge as the true leader of the Congress. Gandhi urged all Indians to take sacred vows to disobey the Rowlatt Acts and launched a nationwide movement for the repeal of such repressive measures. His appeal received the strongest response in the Punjab, where two nationalist leaders Kichloo and Satyapal addressed mass protest rallies. Gandhi was arrested when he was on his way to Punjab to attend one of their rallies, and was taken back to Bombay on the orders of Punjab’s governor, Sir Michael O’Dwyer.

On 10 April, 1919, Kichloo and Satyapal were both arrested in Amritsar and deported from the district by Deputy Commissioner Miles Irving. Their followers were outraged and proceeded to march to Irving’s residence, demanding the release of the two men. No sooner had they arrived than they were fired on by British soldiers. With several of their men either killed or wounded, the now incensed mob rioted through the old city of Amritsar. They set fire to houses and property associated with the British rule, and four European men were brutally murdered.

General Dyer was ordered to take Gurkhas and Balochi troops to try and restore order and, as a result, around 20 Indians were killed before the end of the day.

DEPLORABLE
 
ACT

The protection of women and children by the white population in India had been a major priority since the Indian Rebellion of 1857. They were considered a defenceless and vulnerable part of society, open to the despoliation of the natives. So when an English woman, Miss Marcella Sherwood, a Church of England missionary, was molested on a street in the city of Amritsar, the repercussions were enormous.

Miss Sherwood had been a resident in Amritsar for over 15 years and, although she was not involved in the riots in any way, she was unable to escape the wrath of the crowd. As she was cycling down one of the narrow streets, she was set upon by an enraged crowd of Indians. They knocked her off her bicycle and hit her around the head with sticks while she lay on the ground. Miss Sherwood, despite her injuries, managed to get onto her feet and as she tried to run away from the crowd, she was once again brought down. On her second atempt, Miss Sherwood managed to run to a house to ask for help, but as she knocked on the door, the occupant simply slammed it in her face. Again the crowd set on her and left her criticially injured on the side of the road. After the crowd had dispersed, a rescuer came to her aid and prompt medical attention saved her life.

THE
 
REVOLUTION
 
TAKES
 
HOLD

Although the city of Amritsar was quiet for the next few days, the rumbles of revolution could be heard in other parts of the Punjab. Government buildings were burnt, railway lines and communication cables were destroyed, and a further three European men were murdered in a period of three days. On the third day following the attack on Miss Sherwood, 13 April, the government decided to place Punjab under martial law. The troops at the disposal of General Dyer included 475 British and 710 Indian soldiers.

The 13 April also marked the Baisakhi festival, and a large number of people, mostly Sikhs, had poured into the city of Amritsar from the surrounding villages. In the morning, Dyer’s soldiers had gone through the streets of the city to announce that any group meetings would be dispersed by force, using arms if it was necessary. At 4.30 p.m. a crowd of around 15,000 to 20,000 Indians had gathered for a meeting in the Jallianvala Bagh (or garden), a large unused piece of land in the heart of Amritsar that was surrounded by crude walls and just one, single exit.

As soon as Dyer heard of the defiance to his orders, he headed for Jallianvala Bagh with 50 riflemen (mostly Indian and Gurkhas) and two armoured cars. Dyer positioned his men by the narrow entrance into the bagh, ensuring that there was no possibility of anyone making a quick escape. The ground surrounding the entrance was slightly higher than the rest of the bagh, which gave the troops an excellent vantage point. It was here that they waited for the order from Dyer.

Dyer gave the command, without giving any warning to the crowd inside the bagh, for his troops to open fire where the mob was most concentrated. The firing continued indiscriminately for over 20 minutes, and they spent over 50 rounds of ammunition. People attempted to flee as best they could, but many were trampled in the ensuing stampede. Some mothers, still clutching their children, jumped into a well in an attempt to escape the constant rain of bullets.

Dyer and his men simply marched away down the same route they had arrived, leaving behind the carnage of dead, dying and wounded. Although there is no official record of the number of Indians killed on that day, it is estimated that 400 died and as many as 1,200 were severely wounded, although it is suspected that the numbers were far higher.

AFTER
 
THE
 
EVENT

Jallianwala Bagh was only the start of a prolonged phase of appalling violence and insurgence. When news of the massacre reached the surrounding districts, mass riots erupted in the Punjab, and the government placed a further five towns under martial law. Students and migrant labourers from Kashmir set fire to government buildings, destroyed the Kachi bridge, bungalows, local courts and also the railway station. Spontaneous riots broke out in Sheikhpura, Sangla and Chuharkhana. The local authorities appealed to the government for help, but as the bridges had been destroyed they had to deploy aeroplanes to quell the insurrections. On 14 and 15 April, aircraft from Lahore dropped three bombs on a the protesting crowds, followed by rounds of machine-gun fire.

Appalled by the escalating amount of violence and subsequent deaths, Gandhi called for
satyagraha
, which is the philosophy of nonviolent resistance. From then on colonial reprisals began, perhaps the most notable of which was the famous ‘crawling order’ introduced by General Dyer. This order meant that anyone passing down the street where Miss Sherwood was assaulted, had to pass on all fours with their noses close to the ground, just like an animal. Under marshal law there was even a mandate that said Indians must dismount in the presence of a European and raise their right hand as a sign of respect. Others who were suspected of being involved in any sort of trouble were beaten and made to work as
punkha-pullers
(or fan operators). A total of 1,229 people were convicted of involvement in the uprisings – 18 were sentenced to death, 23 were transported for life and 58 were flogged on the orders of the Martial Law Commission.

General Dyer was convinced that he had managed to crush the rebellion, but eventually a Disorder Inquiry Committee, known as the Hunter Committee, was set up to investigate what had taken place, and it was decided that he had committed a ‘grave error’. Dyer was relieved of his commission and forced to take early retirement from the army. However, on arrival in England he was treated as a hero and presented with a purse containing thousands of pounds and a jewelled sword inscribed with the words ‘Saviour of the Punjab’.

Back in India, the Amritsar Massacre had provoked feelings of deep hatred and it led to the freedom movement in the Punjab against British rule. It also paved the way for Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement against the British in 1920.

The actual site of the massacre at Jallianvala Bagh became a place of national pilgrimage. A memorial was built on the site and was unveiled at a ceremony by the then-president of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad on 13 April 1961. To this day, the bullet holes can be seen in the walls and adjoining buildings. The well, into which several people jumped and drowned, has also been turned into a protected monument inside the garden. A semicircular verandah surrounding a children’s swimming pool marks the spot where General Dyer’s soldiers stood waiting to fire.

One man got his own revenge for the massacre, which he had witnessed first hand. An Indian revolutionary nationalist by the name of Udham Singh, shot dead Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the man believed to have planned the actual massacre, at Caxton Hall in London on 23 March, 1940. He would probably have liked to have killed General Dyer as well, but he had died many years earlier in 1927. Singh was a freedom fighter and
The Times
referrred to his action as ‘an expression of the pent-up fury of the downtrodden Indian people’.