Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 00 357 99 966518
00 90 542 853 8436
`I witnessed the stories of `missing persons` very closely…
This `closeness` was not due to family ties but observations as a journalist…
It was the first week where I had begun working in the YENIDUZEN newspaper as chief editor and we needed restructuring and new projects concerning the content…
And there was a wise journalist who was `hungry` and `stubborn` for research amongst ourselves, she needed to `get off her desk`, get rid of `routine`, run after real stories, produce much more…
She came to me with the project of `Missing Persons`…
As I said, the stories of `missing persons` were still a very important `taboo` - this was the beginning of 2000…
She started with the series of articles called `Oysters with the missing pearls` and after a while I realized that I should never touch Sevgul Uludag, I should just leave her alone – she would go on her journey, travel and come back to us full of stories. All we had to do was just to stand straight and firm…
Some of the relatives of `missing` were saying `I just want back the remains of my father, I want to have a grave for him`, others were bursting out with the `anger against the killers` and all of these voices were raising up, exploding against the silence of the official history…
But it did not stay there…
As soon as the checkpoints were opened, there started a massive flow of information, this flow would not stop and now Sevgul Uludag was following these `leads` and new burial sites of `missing persons` were being uncovered, the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee would be reactivated and the community was becoming aware of the truth it had been living in for so many years…
And there started pressure coming and what sort of pressures…
Maybe I am writing this for the first time – one day with the `facilitation` of a few politicians I was taken to a village, they put me in some sort of a `garage` like place and closed the doors… It was a place in the Messaoria…
Tens of men… Their eyes were full of anger and not relenting, they were almost `questioning` me… They said, `This series of articles will stop!`
I could read the `fear` in the faces of all of them!...
Because each file Sevgul would open, there would be tens of `potential criminals` in each new village she was writing about having to face the truth…
`The suffering` had opened its eyes in the consciousness, had woken up again and it had been too heavy facing the truth…
What was more, as the checkpoints opened and mutual crossings began, suspicions and fear started eating up the bodies of those who had been living for so many years in `denial`…
They knew the burial sites of many `missing persons`, they knew who had shot, who had dug, how they were buried; who knows maybe they could not forget their `cries`… They had not forgotten…
Maybe they had never spoken about these again, maybe they were just looking at each other's `faces` and making as though no such things were ever lived…
The stories that Sevgul Uludag is following `in trace of the missing` is approaching to three thousand today…
The pressures, the threats, the swearing we got from a lot of circles have come down, even disappeared now…
Taboos have been broken…`
These are the words of my chief editor Cenk Mutluyakali who wrote an article in the weekend magazine of our newspaper YENIDUZEN called ADRES KIBRIS last week: http://www.yeniduzen.com/Ekler/adres-kibris/177/kayip-la-hamlet-arasinda-kurtulamiyorsun-sonucta/1800
Cenk Mutluyakali gave me his full support, standing by me not just in words but deeds and if it was not for his firm stand, the series of articles reaching 3 thousand nowadays, we would not be able to publish in YENIDUZEN newspaper. I knew he was getting a lot of pressure to stop my articles but he never gave in…
In fact he had never told me that he was taken to a village in Messaoria and `locked` in a garage, having to face the threats from the villagers… It was the first time I was hearing this from him but I was not surprised. I guessed the village could be Chatoz or Agia Kepir in Messaoria and when I asked him he confirmed that it had been Agia Kepir… I got quite a few death threats from Agia, including from the leadership of the village in those times when I had written about a well where some Turkish Cypriots from the village had killed and buried some Greek Cypriots. They were in complete `denial` and demanded to know who had told me this. They would go all the way up to the Turkish Cypriot leader of the time and he would even call me and my chief editor about it but we would stand firm. They would hold meetings in the village and I would be intimidated on the phone… But the committee would dig and find the remains of Greek Cypriots killed and buried
in the well in Agia… In the end `truth` would find its way out of the well…
His article reminded us that it had not been easy to break the taboos, to publish the information that my readers were giving me – both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots – about what had happened in their villages, how people were harassed or killed or raped and where the possible burial sites were… I was getting a lot of death threats from the killers, calling me and shouting at me that they would hunt me from behind me and would shoot and kill me or swearing at me or harass me or come all the way to my office in the newspaper threatening me… It was not easy to face the truth for many of them, for those who had been involved but also their relatives were upset and were calling me and asking me, `What is your aim in publishing such stories?!...`
Even mayors published statements denouncing me – mayor of Chatoz at the time would openly denounce me because I had written that some Turkish Cypriots from this village had executed and buried some Greek Cypriots in the well of the mosque in the village… I was writing about other burial sites in Chatoz and the mayor was so upset and was in complete denial… He tried to get off his anger on me… I was already receiving death threats from this village – I would never travel there alone but always go with someone I trusted… One day the late Sheih Nazim Kibrisi, a Nakshibendi religious leader of Turkish Cypriots was taking around some foreign delegation who had come to visit him… While going to Famagusta, he had told the delegation `See, this is Chatoz, let's go there to the mosque and make our namaz…` and they had gone to the mosque at the spur of the moment. Seeing the cars near the mosque some of the `killers` in Chatoz thought it was me
going to investigate some wells in the yard of the mosque and they mobilized calling other `friends` of theirs to go to the mosque to beat me up! They were shouting in the village calling me names you don't want to hear and when they gathered and went to the mosque, they were shocked to see it was Sheih Nazim, not me at the mosque! Some of my readers would call me and tell me what had happened and we would laugh about it imagining the shock they got finding Sheih Nazim, instead of me…
During the exhumation of the well in Chatoz, they would issue death threats under the pseudonym `Turkish Revenge Brigade` and distribute everywhere saying in essence that whoever was helping to find the `missing` would be `punished`. Stuff like that…
But the mayor of Galatia village in those years would go one step further – I had been trying to locate the burial site of Takis Hadjinikolaou, the `missing` judge from Yialousa and we had worked on this for five years together with his son Spyros… We had people helping us and we had learned that they were killed and buried in the lake of Galatia, some from Yialousa together with some others from Karpasia. Some of my readers would show this burial site in the lake to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and soon exhumations would begin… The mayor got so upset he invited the head of the Turkish Cypriot Army to the village and asked to help him `to silence these traitors!`
The head of the Turkish Cypriot Army did not do or say anything to him and left – in the following days, the head of the Turkish Army stationed in Cyprus went to the village with a helicopter! The mayor asked him as well to `help him to silence these traitors!` The commander would not do or say anything and would leave… The exhumation would begin under big pressure and the mass grave would be uncovered…
I got threats from some of the Greek Cypriot `killers` as well and had to be creative enough in learning how to deal with them… I am thankful to a handful of Greek Cypriot friends who helped me out using their influence in trying to stop the threats, particularly I am thankful to a Greek Cypriot woman, a long-time friend whose name I will not mention here…
It was not easy to reach the point where we are now, breaking down the taboos, facing death threats, facing abuse and slander and psychological terror… I know quite well that long before I started investigating the fate of the `missing persons`, Xenophon Kallis who had done extensive work on `missing persons` were getting similar threats… Our friend journalist Andreas Paraschos was threatened severely when he began his investigations about `missing` Greek Cypriots back in 1995-1998. I am sure there were others who got intimidated by the `killers` in both `sides` of our island since we were all doing a very dangerous job: When you hide the grave, you hide the crime, when you hide the crime, you hide the criminal… We were trying to uncover the graves, therefore uncovering the crimes and the criminals although nobody has ever touched them, they still felt very upset and angry…
Now that the taboos are broken, a lot of `sharks` roam our seas, trying to bite off a piece and they keep calling me for `help` since they too want to `write about missing persons` or create `projects` about `missing persons` and they want me to give them names and help them meet people and to give them this or that information. They are not really interested in the pain of the relatives or how to cure this pain, they just want a quick, nice article, something `sensational` perhaps for their newspapers or news agencies or their TV stations and radios… I tried helping some of them only if I see that they understand how much suffering there is and if they are really serious journalists… Otherwise I try to avoid these `sharks` who are out hunting and trying to smell the `blood` for their own causes, not necessarily for the good of our communities…
28.9.2014
Photo: Cenk Mutuyakali, our brave chief editor in the Yeniduzen newspaper...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 12th of October, 2014 Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment