FALSE DECLARATIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 31, 6 February 1896, Page 2

FALSE DECLARATIONS.

TURKS SEiEK BY THESE TO DECEIVE THE WORLD.

Londok, December 19. —The J 4Daily News" to-morrow will publish a dispatch from Constantinople which says :

Tho latest move of the Government officials ab Bit/lie, Van, Erzeroum, and Karpootis to coerce Armenian notables into signing a declaration thab the American missionaries were responsible for the maasacrea by stirring up the Armenians to revolt.

In Bifclis and Karpoot most of the notables ore in prison, and are allowed out daily to collect signatures for this lying declaration. Your readers are aware of the horrors of Turkish prisons. It is easily understood that the hope of better treat-.

ment would prove a powerful inducement to obtain signatures. But the pretence is a foul lie, and it is another clever coup of Izzot Bey, with the three-fold object of incriminating the missionaries, of justifying a refusal of indemnities for their losses, and of so inflaming the Moslems against them as to make their residence in Turkey impossible. The American missionaries have been the moat devoted friends of tho Armenians, and their injury or expulsion by such a trick would bo the final triumphant flout by the Sultan at civilised opinion.