Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
On the 24th of June 2015 Wednesday morning we go to pick up a witness from Agios Georgios to go to Lapithos so he can show us a possible burial site of two `missing` Greek Cypriots… We go together with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, Okan Oktay who is responsible for exhumations in CMP and Xenophon Kallis who is the Assistant to the Greek Cypriot Member of CMP.
In Agios Georgios my reader – the witness – offers us coffee so we sit down so he can tell his story… I had written his story earlier and had informed the officials of the CMP…
It had been a few years after 1974 and he saw some remains close to where he lived… This was the corner of a school and close by, before 1974 there had been a Greek Cypriot military post around there…
There had been torrential rains and so the remains buried where they were had started coming out… Together with a neighbour he had taken the big bones and thrown them in a stream… But the hand bones and the ribs they had left where they were…
This reader had called me one night telling me the story…
`At that time there was no sensitivity about such things… But now I want to help… If they dig where I will show and if they sieve the soil, they will most probably find the remains of two `missing` persons…`
That is why we are here so he can take us to the spot…
We go to Lapithos and next to the school, just on the corner, he shows us where he had seen the remains of two `missing persons`…
`There were no skulls though` he says…
Close by is a stream, perhaps they had thrown the big bones there?
He does not remember he says `But the rest of the remains must be here… This is exactly where we saw them…`
We thank him for doing this and while Okan takes him back to Agios Georgios and until he comes back to Lapithos I try to find the mother of my friend who lives in London who will show us another burial site in Lapithos…
My friend in London had told me this:
`When we moved to Lapithos after 1974, my father saw a Greek Cypriot soldier lying dead under one of the trees. He buried him where he had found him… But after some time the garden was given to someone to do some sort of work there so my father got worried that this shallow grave might be disturbed. He opened the grave and took the remains out and buried him further up in a well…`
Her father is no longer alive so now I try to find her mother to tell us the story and perhaps show us the possible burial site.
I find her and she tells me that the one `missing` person had been buried in the back garden under some lemon trees but the dogs had dug out and the remains had come out… The `missing` Greek Cypriot had a hand grenade on him so they had taken that as well and had buried him in a well behind an old house.
We get in the car and we travel so she can show us this old house…
It is a big, beautiful house of stone and I find out that since 1974 no one ever used it… It just remains there, in Lapithos, crumbling, trying to withstand time, alone, desolate… Okan and Kallis try to go inside the house but 40 years of neglect has turned the garden into a thick bush… Inside the house they discover that there are many balls of children: According to Okan Oktay, when the ball went into this house, the children must have been afraid to go and get their balls so the balls remain there! `It is like a haunted house!` Okan says…
We take photos and coordinates and Kallis will try to find aerial photos of this house from the past so they can locate the well…
We thank her and take her back to her house…
We stop to say hello to Zihni whose grandfather Zihni Tahir is `missing` from Polis… He has a tiny periptero on the beach front where they have recently built a pedestrian walkway parallel to the beach… It stretches from Vasilia to Lapithos…
Zihni's grandfather is `missing` - he believes that some TMT people had taken him off the bus in Polis and had beaten him up and he died and is still `missing` since 1964… Zihni Tahir had been born in a farm in Akamas, had moved to Fasli village and was working in the Yiolou farm…He had been `warned` by some TMT guys `not to deal with Greek Cypriots` - Tahir barely spoke Turkish, was very fluent in Greek. He had animals…
Zihni talks about his grandfather's possible burial site in Polis: `They told us that it is under the secondary school…`
`In those days in 1963-64, there was no prison so they would take people to caves in order to beat up and frighten people… There were caves there` he says…
`But we had gone there to show a possible burial site` I tell Zihni. `It had been perhaps back in 2005 or 2006… A Turkish Cypriot from Polis wanted to show us a possible burial site next to the secondary school and we had gone together with Ilias Georgiades and Ahmet Erdengiz, officials of the CMP at the time… But as far as I know, this place has never been exhumed` I tell Zihni. `The person who showed us this place had information that some Turkish Cypriots `missing` from 1964 had been buried there… But he was thinking it was Cengiz Ratip and Turgut Sitki…`
Perhaps I need to find that witness again and take him to Polis again and also do some investigation about the `missing` Zihni Tahir… It is the first time I am hearing this story…
We say goodbye to Zihni and go back to Nicosia…
The following week this time we go to Agios Georgios, Kyrenia to meet another reader about two other possible burial sites… On the 1st of July 2015 Wednesday, we go to find my reader who has called me and told me that he knew of three possible burial sites in Agios Georgios. Again I am together with Okan Oktay and Xenophon Kallis from the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee.
But before we go to Agios Georgios first we stop at St. Hilarion in order to meet two Greek Cypriot readers of mine. One of them is the relative of a "missing" person – the remains of his "missing" brother had been found some years ago and returned to his family for burial. For him the issue of "missing persons" did not end there – since then he is trying to find possible burial sites of both Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot "missing persons".
We had been wanting to meet at the St. Hilarion area for a long time and only now we could manage to meet here. He has some coordinates that I had given to the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee before… He says that these coordinates show the possible burial site of a "missing" Turkish Cypriot from 1963. Once again we give the map and the coordinates to the officials of the CMP. This reader knows an old man who had done his military service in 1966 in this area and the old man remembers someone bringing some bones to the military headquarters back then. They had found some remains back then and my reader says that these coordinates and the map show where these remains were found. We thank my readers for their humanitarian help and leave to go to my reader in Agios Georgios.
We find him and his wife offers us lemonade that she made with tangerines, lemons and oranges… A Turkish Cypriot family had moved to a house after 1974 in Agios Georgios and in the house they had found four `missing` Greek Cypriots killed and wrapped in moushamma… They had buried them behind the house under some babutsa…
The woman who had moved to this house, having seen the four dead bodies realized that she could not live there… She would feel eerie, she would see them in her dreams so soon after they moved out of this house and went to live abroad…
Another Turkish Cypriot family had moved to this house afterwards but there was a big stench from the garden, under an olive tree… When they asked about why there was this stench, they were told in the local coffee shop that some Greek Cypriots had been buried between the olive and orange tree… The Turkish Cypriot guy who had started living there would constantly put lime over the spot where the stench was coming from… So this was a very suspicious place and my reader wanted to show us both spots…
We go with him to find the babutsa and he tells us that `All this area had been a killing ground… This was a place where the most violent fight took place in July 1974…`
Later I go with his wife to find the olive tree We take photos and coordinates.
Then we go to close to the seaside in Agios Georgios so he can show us a house…
He says that the family who had moved to this house had found seven "missing" Greek Cypriots in the basement of the house, killed and wrapped in some sort of nylon…
Actually the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had done some exhumations in this area but Okan Oktay says that they never knew about this house…
My reader says that "Probably they had informed the police back then…"
Kallis does not recall any case where remains of a group of seven "missing" Greek Cypriots being returned by the police to the CMP.
This means that we need to investigate the fate of these seven "missing"…
My reader tells Okan Oktay the name of the owner of the house – he is not alive but his wife is alive he explains.
We thank him for his humanitarian help…
`They too have relatives who are waiting for them…` he says, `I must share what I know to help them… This is what humanity necessitates…`
4.7.2015
Photo: The house in Lapithos where no one lives for the last 41 years…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 9th of August 2015, Sunday.
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