DAY BY DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15028, 28 August 1922, Page 4

DAY BY DAY

The report which the British Armen-

Atrocities In Anatolia.

ian Commission has issued, covering allegations by Miss Ethel Thompson, an American

citizen, of sickenipg outrages perpetrated by the Turks in Anatolia upon Greek women and children tells, unfortunately, a familiar story. An appalling account of the alleged Turkish policy of extermination as regards the Greeks was recently received from Athens by the Greek Legation in London. It was the narrative of a few survivors of the Pontus massacres, attended with a request that it should be addressed to foreign Governments and to the whole civilised world in the form of a protest against the inhuman deeds of the Kemalists, and as an appeal for the assistance of the Powers “in order to save from otherwise certain destruction the Greeks still in Pontus.” An extract from the narrative reads: “The great majority of the Greek population of the district of Bafra,' amounting to 40,000 people, settled in 126 Greek villages, have been massacred by the Angora Government between May last year and the present time, either by the knife or by other inhuman and bestial methods. The Armenian population has been submitted to the same fate.” A terrible story is told of the arrival at Bafra in February of Fethi Bey, Minister of the Interior of the Angora Government, with 8000 soldiers, who searched the mountains for Greek refugees. Suspecting that some of the richer Greeeks might have escaped by bribing the soldiers, Fethi Bey demanded to be shown the heads of these individuals, and “five sacks crammed with heads were therefore shown in the course of 15 days to the Minister." The narrative concludes:

"Along the whole Pontine littoral hardly a single Greek remains. Pupils and teachers of schools and priests in the villages have been burned alive in their schools or churches. To excite fanaticism, the -Turkish Governor of Bafra and other Turkish functionaries spread false reports that the Greeks are daily massacring Turks at Smyrna. These mendacious reports are being spread everywhere by the'authorities as official communiques." Again, the Unspeakable Turk I