RAFAELLA wrote:An interview with Mustafa Organ, a Turkish soldier serving in the 48th Ankara/Tsoumbouk artillery brigade at the time of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, was published on 28 January 1998 in the Frankfurt-based newspaper 'Ozgur Politica'.
Organ referred to the massacre of about 100 Greek Cypriot civilians who had fled to the small village of Mora, near Nicosia. 'Those killed at the exit of the village were women, children and pensioners who were running for their lives', he said. 'The little streets and the exit areas were full of civilian pensioners and small children who were trying to get away. These people were killed in the most vicious way and some of the bodies were cut to pieces. The bodies were lying in the scorching heat for a week. Later officers told us we had to hide the bodies. I drove a bulldozer. Others dug a large and wide ditch and buried them. Soldier Efket Avcioglu from Mara? was also a witness to the event'.
Organ referred also to prisoners being killed and robbed and Greek and Turkish Cypriot women and girls being raped by Turkish officers and soldiers. 'I cannot forget a tall dark officer from Adana who raped a 13 year old Greek Cypriot girl, and the rape of two Turkish Cypriot girls near the Nicosia industrial zone', he said.
It can be said that all the human rights safeguarded by international conventions were violated by Turkey in Cyprus. The European Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Commission of the Council of Europe have established that many crimes were committed in Cyprus by Turkish troops, such as cold-blooded murders, rapes, enforced prostitution, torture, inhuman treatment etc. By committing those crimes intentionally and on a mass scale, Turkey is answerable for war crimes and/or crimes against humanity. Having in mind the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, together with relevant judgments of international courts, Turkey's conduct towards the Greek Cypriot population in the occupied area of Cyprus should be considered as an act of genocide. Large-scale killings of both conscripts and civilians, cold-blooded murders, deliberate infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, all directed against Greek Cypriots simply because of their ethnic origin, race and religion, constitute a genocide according to international
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