Season of funerals for `missing persons`…

Season of funerals for `missing persons`…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

The season of the funerals begins again, this is the season when most of the funerals for the `missing persons` take place – even if remains have been found and families notified, generally relatives wait for the summer season for their relatives abroad to come so they can take part in the funeral… Cypriots are dispersed all over the world, in England, in Australia, in Canada and that is why the funerals of `missing persons` take part more in July and August as relatives come back from abroad for a visit.
I try to go to the funerals of `missing persons` whose remains had been found with the help of my readers – I try to go to the funerals of both Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot `missing` and to be with the relatives in this last journey… For me, this is like putting a full stop and some sort of closure… Working and investigating for years, having found so many things about this or that particular `missing` person from their relatives and friends, they become part of me even though I never knew them… If with the help of my readers we have shown the possible burial site and remains have actually been found, then begins a long wait for the work of the Anthropological Laboratory of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and the results of the DNA analysis.
Sometimes I would call them and ask whether the DNA identification have been done to this or that particular `missing person` who had been found with the help of my readers in this or that particular well. But most of the time, I never learn or rarely learn by coincidence. Most of the relatives of the `missing persons` also never learn about the vital role that my readers have played in the finding of the remains of their beloved `missing person` because this is never told to them. Unless we have been following the whole process together with the family of the `missing person`…
Sometimes we don't know which `missing persons` had been buried in a place we have shown, so naturally we wouldn't have a way of knowing who are their relatives. Therefore only until the DNA analysis is done, the identity of those `missing` would be known but since we are not part of that process with my readers, we wouldn't know and the funerals would take place and we wouldn't find out who those `missing persons` were that we helped to find and the relatives wouldn't know either since they would not be told.
Years ago one of my readers had given me a skull that he had found in Koutsovendis while hunting and had kept it for years. Through my articles he realized that this skull belonged to a `missing person`, that it was human, not a memorabilia to keep. So he called me midnight one day and told me that he wanted to give the skull back. We met the next morning and I took the skull and on the same day gave it to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee. I would also convince him to show us where he took this skull from and we would go with him and he would show the archaeologists the area from which he took the skull from. I wondered for years to whom this skull belonged to. Almost every month I would ask whether DNA identification had been done. But I only found out a month after the funeral that the DNA identification had been done, the skull returned to the family and that the funeral took place. It belonged to a young Greek Cypriot from
Alambra and his wife took the remains and buried… Maybe I will find the opportunity to visit his wife one day…
Sometimes I would read about the funeral of a `missing person` that we helped to find in the newspapers. Sometimes the relatives call me and invite me to the funeral and I try to go to those funerals and put some soil and say my belated condolences to the family, the condolences due for 40 or 50 years… Sometimes even this is not possible like it happened with the Rahmi family who had been killed and buried in a well in Livera. With the help of my Greek Cypriot readers I had shown twice to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee the possible burial site of this Turkish Cypriot family from Vasilia and wrote their story. They had been a family of seven – five of them kids. They had gone to work for a Greek Cypriot in Livera and were killed in December 1963 and buried in a well… Since there had been no news about the funeral, I could not go… But in spirit I was at that funeral…
There are two funerals in the following weeks of two `missing` persons, one Turkish Cypriot and the other a Greek Cypriot that I will attend. It was my readers who helped to find their burial site… Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo will be buried on the 22nd of July in Nicosia and Michalis Pekri will be buried on the 9th of August in Kalo Chorio. I will try to go to both funerals.
Mehmet Abdurrahman Chatallo had been killed in 1974 in Polis and one of my readers, the relative of a `missing person` from Polis, Unay Pasha helped me to find the person who had buried him, as well as others. Shevket Rado from Polis, despite his old age and poor health would agree to come with me and the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to Polis to show us the burial sites in October 2013. In one spot where he showed, the remains of three `missing persons` were found and in another spot, another `missing person`, a total of four `missing` Turkish Cypriots from Polis from 1974.
I had worked quite a bit investigating about the disappearance of Michalis Pekri from Vatyli and had gone to interview his wife Christina back in 2009. With the help of my readers, I had shown in those years to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, his possible burial site – it was a well… Many years passed until the exhumations began and at the depth of 33 meters, down in the well, his remains had been found. Now his remains are being returned to his family for burial and there will be the funeral of `missing` Michalis Pekri on the 9th of August Sunday at 10.00 at Kalo Chorio (Vuda) at the St. Raphael Church. I will try to attend this funeral – I called the daughter of `missing` Pekri, Maria and she sounded sad… They had gone to see the remains of her father in the laboratory and what came out of the well: the buttons of his shirt, his pants, his shoes… Pekri had eight kids and a farm… He was killed by his Turkish Cypriot
`friends` since they had `shared` his animals, cows, that they did not want to return to Pekri… 41 years after `missing` from Vatyli, now he will be buried in Kalo Chorio where his family had to become refugees and I will go there to put some soil on his grave, as though putting the last full stop on my investigations about him.
I would like to thank from the heart all my readers, both Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot who have shown their humanity in this whole process… With your help remains of many `missing persons` have been found and are being returned to their relatives for burial – many many thanks from my heart…

17.7.2015

Photo: `Missing' Michalis Pekri will be buried on the 9th of August 2015 Sunday.

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 26th of July 2015, Sunday.

`The handbook of the organisations…`

`The handbook of the organisations…`

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

Today I would like to share with you a touching story written by Dr. Dervish Ozer entitled `The handbook of the organisations…` Dr. Dervish Ozer has sent me this story and I published in YENIDUZEN and now we are sharing it with our readers in POLITIS. Here is the story of Dr. Dervish Ozer:

`The handbook of the organisations…`

Dr. Dervish Ozer

Actually there is no such book, I made it up…
As I was sitting down and thinking today, I thought of hundreds of shepherds killed on this island. The shepherds killed and thrown in wells (lakkos)… I thought of their sheep that remained behind, their children, their sticks (topouzi), their bags (vourka), their flutes (bityavli) in their bags and their water carriers made of gourd (nerokoloko)… I thought of the trough made up of palm trees and used to water their animals at the edge of the wells and I thought of their `jiboyi` - the long stick with a hook to catch the sheep – that has been used by shepherds tending sheep for thousands of years on this island.
In the old times, they used to evaluate children at a certain age – they would make the kids wrestle in the centre of the village. Those who would prove to be strong would be sent to tend the ox used in tending fields. Those who would be a bit weaker but whose ear would pick up easily the sounds, those who could blow good whistles, those with a strong voice would be sent to tend flocks of sheep. The weaker ones would be sent to become apprentices to seamstresses and boot makers. The worst ones would be went to school since they were no good for anything with the thought that perhaps they would study and become a `katip` (clerk) so they can keep a record of the wheat, barley, goats and sheep in their weak state as clerks…
Those who would be sent to cut wheat and barley would become `djabbar` (powerful) and would be strong enough to handle two mules easily… A little bit more fragile and with a nice voice would be given to take care of the flock. They would put on his back a shepherd's bag made up of the whole skin of the sheep and they would put water in the water bottle of the shepherd made of gourd and shake it behind him and behind the sheep. And the only thing he would be this, that is taking care of his flock. In the beginning hundreds of sheep would be no different from each other but in time the little shepherd would find out that each sheep in fact has a name and a different character. The little shepherd would learn about their diseases, how to treat them, how to milk them and how to help them deliver their baby lambs… The little shepherd would stay for a long time in the fields and would learn to talk with sheep more than with humans. He would understand
from the eyes what a sheep was trying to tell him. On long summer nights to protect himself from the heat and on long winter nights to protect himself from the cold, he would be sleeping between the legs of the sheep...
And of course, he would learn to make `chakari` (bells hung around the necks of sheep)… After many years the growing little shepherds would come to know that each chakari would produce a different sound and each beat of the hammer on the copper would make the sound of the chakari more beautiful… They would learn that the most hammered copper would produce the best sound and during long nights of winter they would beat sheets of copper to make chakari for their sheep. With each beat of the hammer, they would be able to produce a bell through which they could differentiate the sheep and recognize them from this sound. In short each chakari hung around the neck of sheep would have a completely different sound and would sound different as each sheep walked. Imagine how the shepherd would perceive the sound of a whole flock with chakari producing such a sound… And imagine what sort of an ear that shepherd would have. Being a shepherd needed exactly that
sort of ear in those times…
During the long nights of the summer the flock would be staying on the outskirts of the village, the shepherd would start playing his flute (bityavli) made of bamboo and that flock would listen to that music and would accompany the shepherd's music with their own chakari – there has never been better music composed on this island ever… It would be an amazing sound when especially when the zirziro (crickets) and the owls and the bats would participate in this music but only the Shepherd's God and those who lived on this island would know what a beautiful sound this was…
And then sleep would come… The whole village would sleep with this sound on the threshing floor of the wheat, on their roofs, in their gardens. The shepherds would sleep too but with their ears tuned to only one sound, the sound of the chakari… And if they heard the sound of a chakari, they would know which sheep was not sleeping. Five hundred sheep and on the neck of each sheep a chakari, five hundred chakari and each with a different sound and the shepherd would know which chakari he hung around the neck of which sheep and from the sound of the chakari would know which sheep felt uncomfortable, which one was going where and which one was about to give birth… And he would know their troubles. The shepherds would know which sheep were sad and would take special care of them…
And there were the wells (lakkos) where the sheep would be watered. Those who knew where in Mesaoria they could find water, would take a stick of the English tree and go round and where the stick shivered would put stones to mark this place and two or three persons would dig for days in the heat of the summer with short shovels and short picks (`guspo') until they would find water… Then with donkeys they would carry stones to put around the well so it would not tumble down… It was a skill to dig wells and to find water, not only finding water but also protecting that water was a skill… It was a lifestyle to keep the water in its bed on those long summer days and nights, to pull water with chingo buckets, to put this water in troughs made of marble or palm trees, to water the sheep, to fill the water bottle nerokoloko and to put a little bit of salt in your mouth wrapped in a towel and kept in the vourka… This was a lifestyle of those times…
that is why those who live on this island and the gods know that not a single pebble should be thrown in a well. And will not be thrown. This is only known by those who live and who want to live, they know that they don't own that water and whoever wants can use the well to satisfy their thirst. They all knew that water can be used by whoever was coming there and that some salt would be wrapped in a towel and hidden among the stones for those passers-by to find.
This is known by those who live and who want to live, they know how insolent and how unforgivable it is to throw a stone in a well. And for hundreds and thousands of years on this island, not a single pebble was ever thrown in the wells, until the `organisations` (`teşkilatlar') came along…
The `organisations` came to this island. Everything changed, the old order was destroyed, no respect remained. There came men with guns and started going around. When `organisations` surfaced on this island they produced a book with orders. When `organisations` decided that the easiest target to kill for propaganda were the shepherds with their water bottles, their `jiboyi`, their bags made of sheep skin (vourkas), tending their flocks in the fields, everything changed on this island. The shepherds started being shot treacherously by people who came next to them imitating friendship and with whom they had smoked cigarettes. But the shepherds, just as in the old times had thought of them as friends and would roll a cigarette and give it to them, searching for a little friendship and conversation in their loneliness… How would the shepherds know of the organisation or Enosis or Taksim (`partition`)… Their only concern was how many the yellow headed
sheep would give birth to and how many beats of the hammer they would make on the copper sheets to make chakaris for the newborn and what names they would give to the newborns…
In those years of `organisations`, the shepherds learnt other sounds other than the chakari… They learnt that the sound of the pistols pulled out of the waists of those they came around them and smoked rolled cigarettes with them were quite different. And they learnt that those they rolled and offered a cigarette whom they knew as friends were actually not friends. And the shepherds who had learnt and had taught not to throw a single stone in the wells had to learn that there were different sounds other than the chakaris, that the sound of the flutes would no longer be heard on this island, that the gods of love and the gods of the shepherds had left the island and that the wells were filled up with dead shepherds.
And all of these were written in the organisation books on the island.
Who would be killed for propaganda?
How is a shepherd killed?
And how a shepherd would be thrown in a well dug years ago when throwing a single pebble in a well had been a taboo…
And how about now?
First the gods of the shepherds left the island.
Then as shepherds were killed more and more, there was no shepherd left who knew how to make chakari…
There is no shepherd who knows how to play the flute anymore…
There isn't even wells left behind since wells have been filled up with those who had been killed and buried in wells…
Because in the handbook of the organisations, it was written how to kill a human and how to make that human disappear…
(DR. DERVISH OZER – JUNE 2015)

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 19th of July 2015, Sunday.

Writing about `the banality of evil`…

Writing about `the banality of evil`…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

Dr. Dervish Ozer, whose real stories based on life I have published here occasionally, sits down and writes a series of stories on `rape` during the times of war in Cyprus. We create a `Folder of rapes` and I start publishing it on my page called `Cyprus: The Untold Stories` in the YENIDUZEN newspaper. We decide to publish the `Rape Files` for five days – he has more stories though but we choose the most relevant ones in connection with `the Cyprus conflict`.
`Years have taught me that there are no limits to rape` he writes. `Being always together with women as a gynaecologist, listening to their pain and having seen the war, I have witnessed to the kinds of rape inflicted on women…` he continues.
Dr. Dervish Ozer says:
`They have told me stories and I have listened. I will try to tell all their stories… You might say why tell it again, why scratch the wound? And to this I will answer you with the words of a German lawyer, Bernhard Schlink: `Even though we cannot hold responsible the new generations for what has happened in the past, there is a place where old crimes are passed over to the new generations. If members of a society do not bring out the crimes committed in the past out into the open and accept these, if they embrace the perpetrators from their own community and protect them, then they become partners in those crimes. The crimes will be waiting for the new generations until such time that the community accepts this and denounces those crimes. Cleansing themselves of those crimes can only be possible then…`
Dr. Dervish goes on to tell of the rape of a 23 year old girl by a father and a son, how the father taught his 15 year old son to rape…
He goes on to tell another story from Mesaoria where two men argue about raping a woman and how it all comes out years later when one accuses the other of raping a dead woman: He had killed the woman after he had raped her and told his friend that `She is still warm, you can do it…`
He continues to tell stories of harassment and rape within the communities, one of the stories entitled `On those hot summer nights, I had to sleep behind closed windows…` and the title of the other story is `In those times of war I have seen rape coming not only from the enemy but from friends as well…`
The fourth story is entitled `The child born out of rape…` and draws on the fact that there had been a lot of rapes and many young girls were sent back for abortion – somehow one of them gives birth to a child born out of rape and Dr. Dervish tells the feelings of that young girl…
The fifth story is again based on a real story from Mesaoria and is entitled `Years later I saw his photo in newspapers, he was a teacher…`
What Dr. Dervish does is engage himself with dealing with our history, our past, the things that people kept silent about, the things that we should all know in order to re-evaluate ourselves… `What is our place in the world? What have we done to ourselves and to each other? What is this bloody past? What is this history not taught in schools? What went on and why people fell silent? Why these things still not discussed publicly?` Perhaps these are the questions haunting Dr. Dervish and he continues to write and we continue to speak…
There is very few writers who are dealing with the past, engaging themselves to reengage us with dealing with the truth in Cyprus… The mass majority of writers in Cyprus from either community prefers to tell stories of how their own community was a `victim` and very few would go out of their ways to tell stories about how some members of our communities were both `victims` and `perpetrators` - Dr. Dervish does precisely that, not taking the comfortable `side` of his own community but writing about both… The mass majority of writers in Cyprus don't even think about `the other community` - subconsciously it is absent from their narrative, it is all about `us` and how we paid a huge price and how we were victimized and how sorry everyone should feel about us… But for Dr. Dervish nothing is about `us` - all is about `us and them` together, it is about human nature and while some committed crimes how others just watched or how others reacted or how
others tried to save and all in all how we as the two main communities have failed to save each other from so much misery and suffering… He does not just `register` what has happened but tries to capture the feelings of those who have as a result of these crimes suffered: He writes from the mouth of a dead woman or a raped woman or a mother who is giving birth to a child out of rape… He tries to capture the human feeling, the human soul because he is suffering all these years from witnessing all those crimes as a 10 year old kid from Mesaoria and only perhaps by writing these, he can heal his soul… As a 10 year old kid in 1974, he ran among the dead, he listened to stories of the elderly in the coffee shops, he saw how a house was bombed and how his mother would be wounded, losing some of her fingers, swearing at that small age to his mother that he will become a doctor to treat her… And he would become a doctor but more than a doctor through
his writing he is trying to treat our wounds of the past, trying to help us to face our history, trying to heal our souls from the crimes that have become ghosts haunting us…
He writes about the `banality of evil` as in the words of Hannah Arendt – the indifference of perpetrators… In fact I met one of those perpetrators whose indifference would freeze the blood in my veins…
`It was war time` he told me, `in war there is no shame… There is no such thing as honour…`
He had been part of the rapes and killings and had only agreed to speak to me after months of communication with one of his close friends – his friend had convinced him that it was okay to meet with me. This was years ago, probably more than 10 years ago…
I would realize with a shock that he did not know how to read and write, this illiterate man who had gone and killed and raped – he knew those things but did not know how to read and write.
I had shown him the photo of a young boy `missing` from Aphania, trying to figure out where he had been buried… And why they had killed such a young boy, innocent, had nothing to do with any conflict whatsoever…
When I showed him the photo with the name underneath, he could not read and told me so… That he didn't know how to read and write…
He would tell me where they had buried those they had killed from the Aphania area… Later I would tell the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee officials about the burial sites he had told me… Years later they would do exhumations at Ornithi and some other spots and find the remains of some `missing` Greek Cypriots to be given to their relatives for burial…
I would ask him about the rape of a middle aged woman, not able to walk and blind… He would simply laugh and say `There is no honour during times of war, no such thing!`
No regrets, nothing… No feeling… No shame… That must be what is called `the banality of evil`… Just simple `evil` looking me in the eye, sitting in front of me, talking to me as though talking of weather… A black hole among humans…
At the end of our long conversation, he would grab my arm and threaten me that if ever I would disclose his identity, he would come after me…
At night I would sit and think about him – instead of a soul it would be as though he had a black hole inside him… Not human, I would think… Something less than human, something so empty that it is difficult to imagine such a living person with no soul attached to life…
He is still out there, leading his life like so many others from both communities, comfortable in their knowledge of having some sort of `immunity` - they are the `untouchables` since both our communities protect them and they have nothing to `fear`, immersed in their own `banality`, reflecting also the `banality` of our communities for choosing to be silent about all of them… They are not accountable for what they have done since both communities have given them protection by staying silent – staying silent as in the words of Bernhard Schlink, is becoming partners in those crimes…
Dr. Dervish is breaking that silence about the `banality` of such evil, going out of his way to reflect a mirror to our tainted past and the perpetrators who have tainted it… His struggle touches many hearts – many readers tell me of their `shock` in reading the dossier on rapes written by Dr. Dervish… He is connecting our present with our past through telling us about traumatic experiences that's hidden in our history… Because Dr. Dervish does not want to become a partner in those crimes – that's why he is breaking the silence…

13.6.2015

Photo: Painting by Nilgun Güney for the "Color of Truth" exhibition…

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 12th of July 2015, Sunday.

The secrets of the lake Galatia…

The secrets of the lake Galatia…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

We sit at the cafe of Home for Cooperation in Nicosia, on the Green Line, having Cypriot coffee, sketto – no sugar. We sit across the wooden table facing each other on wooden chairs… The air is stifling, hot… We have just come back from a funeral and we don't want to leave each other just yet – she has suggested to sit and have coffee so we sit there, not really knowing what to do, Christina and me…
Between us is the lake of Galatia while we drink our coffee – the lake that knows too much but says little and keeps its secrets hidden way below… The lake where some remains have been found one day before, the lake that we visited many times before, showing possible burial sites…
The lake where Christina's father and brother might have been buried though we don't know for certain… They were the taken to Galatia as prisoners of war from Komikebir back in 1974 and they never returned… After the discovery of the mass graves in Maratha-Sandallaris and Aloa created by some groups of EOKA-B, there started a `killing spree` and the Greek Cypriot prisoners in Galatia had paid `the price` for the sins of EOKA-B – not that this can ever be `justified` but that had been the `trigger` for `revenge`… Among those who had been killed was the young judge Takis Hadjinikolaou from Yialousa – he too had been taken as a prisoner and was in Galatia and his remains would be found in the lake in a mass grave of 11 Greek Cypriot `missing persons`.
Today we have gone to the funeral of the wife of Takis Hadjinikolaou, Agni who had passed away at the age of 80… We have gone to the funeral together with Christina and we sit at the Home for Cooperation drinking coffee and again talking about the lake of Galatia… We drink coffee, the lake Galatia between us…
The remains have been found in an area where we had gone together with Christina and Louis - we had driven on a road overlooking the lake where a witness whom Louis had found had told us roughly where there might be some possible burial sites. We had gone together with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee later on in July 2010, exactly five years ago and now we hear that some remains had been found where the witness that Louis had found had told us there should be some remains there…
Louis is the son of Andreas Pavlos Loizou known as the `Rich man of Komikebir` who is also `missing` like the father and brother of Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia. Five years ago Louis had come with us to investigate his `missing` father. He had been one of the richest men in Karpasia and was very generous. Almost two meters high, he loved life, working, having fun, going around. He had married Sofoulla from Varoshi whose family owned the Florida Hotel. I would meet her too later on, with her blue eyes, white hair and smiling face, she would greet me in her little refugee house in Pallouriotissa. In all seasons at least 60-70 people worked for Christina's father Pavlos, most of them Turkish Cypriots from Komikebir, Kritya (Kilitkaya) and Livadya... He would be arrested in 1974 and brought to Galatia. He would be the last person in prison in Galatia together with his son, Christina's brother...
The father of Louis, Andreas Pavlos Loizou would be sent to Nicosia to be exchanged as a prisoner of war but he would want to go back to Komikebir and then back in Karpasia, they would make him `missing`... Some of my readers had shown a palloura between Livadhia and Galatia, claiming the father of Louis had been buried there... We had shown this place to the CMP but despite excavations nothing was found. My reader would claim that they should have dug further up so we need to go again to see the palloura and check what my reader is saying...
We feel relieved with Christina that remains have been found in the lake... A team of excavators of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee has been digging in the lake on and off for many years and this time some remains have been found...
Christina found some more information about Galatia and we need to clear that up as well... According to some new information she found in her investigations, a Greek Cypriot was hired with his bulldozer to work on the new asphalt road they were building after 1974 from the main Famagusta-Karpaz road to Galatia – that is the main road of Galatia... While straightening a bend from the old road, there came out some human remains... Although they had promised to pay this Greek Cypriot for his work with his shiro (bulldozer), they never did... I actually have an idea about who this bulldozer operator might be and I tell Christina the name and now she makes some calls and finds out that in fact it is him. We make plans on how to go about it... We call the Coordinator of Exhumations of the CMP, Okan Oktay and tell him about this new information and what we are about to do with Christina... He thanks us...
We had actually planned to go to Galatia today but the best laid plans can always change – one of my readers had found a witness from 1974 and we had been arranging to go and meet him – we already postponed this twice. This time just one day before we left for Galatia, Agni Hadjinikolaou passed away and we decided to postpone going to Galatia again and instead go to the funeral together and lay some flowers for Agni...
Agni had been a wonderful woman from the island Lefkada in Greece – she had got married with the young judge Takis Hadjinikolaou and settled in Cyprus – they would have two sons, Spyros and Panos... When her husband was taken prisoner from the coffee shop of Yialousa in 1974 and taken to Galatia and then `disappeared` she would devote all her life for finding information about her husband's disappearance as well as working for other `missing persons`. She would be demonstrating at the Ledra Palace checkpoint with her husband's photograph and together with other women in black, she would visit different cities like London, Brussels, New York in order to campaign for the finding of the fate of `missing persons`.
I had met her years ago, before the checkpoints had opened in a meeting at the Ledra Palace Hotel... Through my friend Magda Zenon, I had already met Spyros Hadjinikolaou, her son whom I had interviewed back in 2001. We had begun working on his father's disappearance and it would take us about five years to learn all the facts and the place of the mass grave with the help of a family – my readers – from Galatia village as well as with the help of other friends from Germany, London etc.
The new witness one of my readers had found in Galatia now claims that after 1974, they had been given the order to open a mass grave, take out the remains and fill them in bags and leave them by the side of the road in Galatia – that someone would pick them up later, that they should just go home and not think about it. What was the reason for this? According to the witness, they were given this order `because of the judge` Takis Hadjinikolaou but they had dug the wrong mass grave and had taken out the wrong remains... Since they were not the ones to bury Takis Hadjinikolaou there, they dug another place, not far from the mass grave where Takis Hadjinikolaou had been buried together with others. `There had been a campaign by his family internationally, that's why they wanted to find and get rid of the remains of the judge` he would tell my reader.
Incidentally we couldn't go to meet him because the wife of the judge Takis Hadjinikolaou, Agni Hadjinikolaou passed away. Instead we went to her funeral, may she rest in peace now...
But we plan to go together with Christina to meet this new witness from Galatia, perhaps next week if our best laid plans don't get disturbed again... Until we find all the secrets of Galatia and its lake, we will continue to go with Christina to find out all the details...

20.6.2015

Photo: The late Agni Hadjinikolaou

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 5th of July 2015, Sunday.