MOSUL AND IRAQ

Hokitika Guardian, 17 December 1925, Page 2

MOSUL AND IRAQ

— A IN ANI AlOl’S DECISION. BRITISH MANDATE FOR 25 YEARS. f Australia & N.Z. Cable Association.] LONDON Dee. 10. It is expected that the League of Nations Council al Geneva to-day will unanimously give a decision assigning Mosul to Iraq and fixing a British mandate over Iraq for years, terminable earlier if Iraq established sufficiently to enter tlie League. The “.Morning Post” Geneva cor respondent states that should Turkey threaten, -he will he told that any ag-groe-ion will he construed as a declaration of war against. Hie League.

fin the course of a recent speech made at Birmingham. in making a plea for the continued occupation of traq. Mr L. S. Amery, Secretary of State for the Dominions and tho Colonies. said that in Iraq—a great vast country, once the home of ancient civilisation, and amongst the richest and most prosperous countries in tho world, then derelict for centuries, and after the war. not only derelict but in absolute elutes -a little handful of Englishmen had worked as advisers, and through the instrumentality of the Lest (tint could he picked out of tho natives themselves had turned the country into one where peace and order reigned, and where ihe beginnings of a new eivilsation were showing themselves on every hand. The work Englishmen had done there in the last five years was as fine a piece of work as ever had been done by tho handfid of Englishmen who worked with Cromer and Milner in the old days of Egypt. No.one who knew what that work was could Believe that the const rintive spirit of the Civil Service of the Crown had failed in our time, or would wish to see it abandoned and thrown away to waste at this time..!

TER KISH ATROCITIES. THE HORi.ORS DEPICTED. GENEVA. Dec. LI. Further evidence of atrocities in Mosul are contained, rn addition to Ai. Laidniier’.K report, cabled on December Pith. The Commissioners place responsibility mi the shoulders of (he Sixtyseerml Regiment of Turkish Infantry. They depict the horrors of forced and hurried deportations and massacres, and relate in'idents of women lieing violated and burned alive under stones. 11l the .State of Baijo alone, forty men were taken ITeni their families and assassinated in remote buildings hy Turkish soldiers who were anxious not to le disturbed during their orgies. Columns were marched for from six to ten da vs without food, several falling out and being immediately massacred. The Commissioners draw attention to she fact that Christians were not illtreated by the Kurds, who protested to the Turks, and who refused Turkish orders t mas-acre the deportees. Thereupon the Turks shot several Kurdish chiefs. A number of Kurdish and Moslem chiefs on the frontier had experienced a desire to he placed within tho Iraq frontier to procure their safety. CHARGES REBUTTED BY TURKS GENEVA, Dee. IG. The Turkish delegation, writing to the Secretary-General of the I.eague of Nations protesting against the accusations of Turkish atrocities. They alleged these charges were made hy Chaldean ecclesiastics, and are inventions. The Turks cite a passage from the Commission’s inquiry report,, purporting to show that tho British authorities distributed nineteen hundred rifles and ammunition among Assyrian tribes.