The silence of the wells…

The silence of the wells…   Sevgul Uludag   caramel_cy@yahoo.com   Tel: 00 357 99 966518 00 90 542 853 8436   Digging continues outside Vatyli where the bulldozer is making a ramp for the past one month… The well must be around 30 meters deep and the ramp is now around 21-22 meters – soon will reach the bottom of the well and that's when we will find out whether the remains of two Greek Cypriots, killed and buried somewhere in this area are in fact in this well. One of my readers had shown this area to me years ago, telling me the story and I had shared this voluntarily with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee… Vatyli had been a mixed village, from time to time tension growing, at other times peaceful and quiet. People had been killed around this village, people had disappeared – a Turkish Cypriot rural constable on the way to Strongylos village had been ambushed and kidnapped and killed – he is still `missing` from January 1964, Hasan Osman `Desteban` as they called him. He had been going with his bicycle to Strongylos that day and on the way was ambushed and kidnapped by some Greek Cypriots of the area and he is still `missing`. Later on, Huseyin Ali Genc, also from Vatyli would be ambushed and kidnapped in Assia by some Greek Cypriots in May 1964 – he too is still `missing`… In 1974, Michalakis Georgiou Pekri from Vatyli, going back to take care of his animals after the 14th of August 1974 would be arrested and his Turkish Cypriot friends wouldn't lift a finger to save him from being killed. Another Greek Cypriot also arrested in that time would in fact be saved by some Turkish Cypriots but Pekri, a rich man with a big animal farm would be executed. My readers from Vatyli village would tell me that the Turkish Cypriot friends of Pekri had already shared his animals and did not want to give back anything and did not try to help to save him. A group of Turkish Cypriots had brought him here, in this field and according to one of my readers had executed him and buried him in a well in this field. A few days later, a Greek Cypriot youngster trying to escape war had come to Vatyli… He had been a young soldier and had asked for water… They gave him water and some watermelon to eat and later on took him to the same well, executing and burying him with Pekri, according to my readers' accounts. One of them had told me that this young boy might have been from Kakopetria but he was not hundred per cent sure. He was just trying to go to the southern part of the island, passing through Vatyli, probably not knowing that this was a mixed village… So the bulldozer is building a big ramp to reach the bottom of the well – my readers had told me that after 1974, this land was given to someone who had constantly thrown dead animals in the well. During the excavations in fact they have encountered animal bones in this well but we will have to wait and see whether they are in fact buried in this well or another well in the same area… According to the villagers, there are four wells in this area as well as another one or two, down below… Burying people in wells had been the trend back in 1963-64, particularly burying the `missing` Turkish Cypriots in wells in those times had been an `easy` choice since they did not need to bring bulldozers and dig holes: The well was ready to swallow up the crimes… 11 Turkish Cypriots from Larnaka had been buried in a well in May 1964 in Voroklini, 3 Turkish Cypriots from Sinda and Knodhara, buried in a well in Lyssi, 2 others in Trikomo… In 1974, this `trend` continued – the killers would find it easy to bury people in wells… In 1974, 19 Greek Cypriots executed in Chaos (Chatoz) had been buried in a well… We go to see the excavations in Kochinotrimitia – I had done a lot of investigation about Kochinotrimitia and one of my Greek Cypriot readers had shown me the famous `laoumi`, a chain of wells just outside the village and had told me that some Turkish Cypriots `missing` from 1963-64 had been buried in these wells. In this huge field there are more than 30 wells but they are not so deep… Probably built by Venetians and Ottomans to carry water from one big well to the village, there are at least three chains of wells that we can even see from aerial photographs from 1963. The wells are around five meters deep and instead of a bulldozer destroying them, an expert on wells is cleaning them… He goes in, digs and puts the earth in a bucket and his aide pulls it up and the archaeologists check for any remains… When he comes out of the well, we start speaking… He is from Denia and speaks some Turkish… He had worked in Libya and that's how he learnt Turkish since there were also Turkish workers there… Koullis is an expert in wells – 30 years ago, he tells me, a one year old child had fallen in a well around Deftera and they had called him to save the child since he was used to working in wells. The mouth of the well where the child had fallen in had been only one feet wide so he would dig a tunnel from another wider well to save the child. They would give him a medal for saving the life of this one year old boy! Now, he is trying to recover the remains of some Turkish Cypriots killed in Kochinotrimitia… Careful and systematic, friendly and comfortable with what he's doing, he impresses me as an expert, knowing exactly what he's doing and how to do it. He will check each and every one of the 30 wells in this wide open field, trying to find out in which one or which ones of these wells some people might have been buried… From my investigations, I have an idea about who might have been killed and buried here – some of them might have been Turkish Cypriot policemen, some of them civilians carrying oranges from Lefka and their trucks were taken and changed and used by the killers themselves, according to the stories of some of my readers from Kochinotrimitia. I had even seen some very old trucks in the village that my Greek Cypriot readers had told me that had belonged to Turkish Cypriots back in 1963. There had been a team in this village who had been involved in the killings of some Turkish Cypriots in Agios Vasilios and who had also gone to kill some Turkish Cypriots in Agia Marina but the priest of the village would stop them. Father Andreas Frangou would save the lives of Turkish Cypriots in his village but in Kochinotrimitia, there had been no one to intervene and stand up against these people who wanted to `clean Cyprus of Turkish Cypriots`. Father Andreas Frangou would tell them in those days, `To turn their eyes to the north and look at Turkey…` Frangou said, `There are 40 million people there! If you kill Turkish Cypriots, you will open the way for them to come here and take revenge! We are like a family in this village, there are many mixed marriages amongst the Maronites and Turkish Cypriots. If you are going to kill them, you have to kill me first!` But such wisdom and courage was rarely found in Cyprus in those times and one terrible thing led to another terrible thing and now after almost a half century later than when the conflict began, we are searching for wells where there might be remains of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot `missing` where they might have been buried. And Cyprus is split into two parts and we still have a long ways to learn how and why we ended up like this. If Father Frangou of the Profiti Ilias Monastery was alive today, he would laugh at Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots for not being able to grasp the whole thing… He died some years ago, this Maronite man of wisdom and courage – many voices of wisdom have been silenced by gangs who did not want to hear any reasoning… We are trying to clean up their mess now, despite the fact that we did not have any role in its creation… In the silent fields of Kochinotrimitia, I think of all those innocent Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots executed – four or five decades have gone by and still we are struggling to bring an end to the pain of their relatives… Such an un-humanitarian climate has been built in Cyprus that we will still need years to come to terms with it…   14.4.2013   P.S. By the time this article went to print, some human remains were found in one of the wells in Kochinotrimitia.   Photo:  Digging at Kochinotrimitia…   (*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 28th of April, 2013, Sunday.