Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Good news comes from Mora: At a place we had shown to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee back in January 2016 together with a witness, the remains of four Greek Cypriots have been found… The digging continues and we have also given information about the road near the field… This road connects Timbou with Aphania and we went on the 25th of May 2016, together with a witness to show where some "missing" might have been buried under the road…
Actually the process was started with the information from Katerina Antona, the relative of a "missing person" from Larnaka. Katerina's brother was on the truck of Fassias and he had jumped down when the truck came under attack around Mora and had run, together with some other Greek Cypriot soldiers…
They would later be caught and killed in Agia Kepir – a village nearby – and buried in a well…
Katerina has got back the remains of her brother as well as others whose relatives were in the well but still there are "missing" from this area…
Finding the remains of her brother did not stop Katerina from searching and she had told me that when the checkpoints had opened back in 2003 she had gone to the area and had met a shepherd from Mora who knew where the truck of Fassias had been…
The truck of Fassias had ammunition so when it was hit, all this ammunition would explode and those who could not get out of the truck would die…
It was an empty field – the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had never done any excavations here… We had gone back in January 2016, on a very cold day, to meet the shepherd that I had found with the tip from Katerina Antona… In fact, he was the father of one of my readers and he had shown all the burial sites in this area and he would count them now to the CMP officials – with his help they had found 12 "missing persons" from the area of Mora… We would go together with Xenophon Kallis, the Assistant to the Greek Cypriot Member of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and a Turkish Cypriot archaeologist and a Turkish Cypriot investigator.
Some four or five months would go by and then the CMP would start excavations in the field. We would visit the area twice with the officials of the CMP and see that the field had been full of remains of ammunition… They would start using a metal detector after some time in order to check the field and even the UNFICYP expert personnel would go and check and ensure the archaeologists that there would be no unexploded bombs here…
And in June 2016, they would find the remains of four Greek Cypriots in the field we had shown them…. I want to thank Katerina Antona for starting this process and giving me the tip to find the witness, I want to thank the witness – the shepherd – for coming and helping us, I want to thank his son – my reader – who brought his father here to this field and I want to thank the CMP for starting digging here which they had never done previously… They had dug the fields to the left and to the right of this field but had never touched this particular field… I am so happy that four more families will finally find a little bit of peace through our joint effort in Mora…
While visiting the area on the 25th of May 2016, I would arrange so Mr. Kallis and Mr. Okan from the CMP would meet a witness who would show us where under the road, near this field, there might be a burial of some more "missing persons"…
Another reader of mine who have been helping us with St. Hilarion area had found someone who had shown him the location…
"Where there is the possible burial site" he had told him, "the asphalt has deteriorated – you can see it with your own eyes… While making asphalt we had found human bones here and had put asphalt over them… Some bones we had pushed to the side, to the ditch…"
So my reader would go and meet this person who had worked in the asphalt works of this road and he would show him the location of the asphalt where it had deteriorated…
So my reader would show this location to Xenophon Kallis and Okan Oktay from the committee.
Again, Katerina Antona had had information about some people buried under the road, years ago and she had told this to the officials of the time…
There had been a lot of stories about this area that we had written years ago – people remembered and we had had a witness show us this area years ago about the possible burial site of some Greek Cypriot "missing persons". There had been digging to the left and right of the asphalt but not the asphalt… On the side they had found some human remains but could not identify whether they were ancient or new so they would send them to the laboratory for testing…
But now is the new opportunity since we have fresh information about the asphalt road…
In fact, it is quite easy to stop traffic from here and dig… Because there is another road connecting Timbou and Aphania – the old asphalt road still exists a few meters further up – so the cars can use the other road… This is what Kallis notices and tells Okan Oktay – that after finishing with the field we had shown in Mora, they could easily shift traffic from the asphalt road to this old road and dig under the road…
I call another reader who had promised to show me a place in Kazaphani… Since he is from Melousha, he knows a lot about what had happened in Agia Kepir…
"You know, there were 14 persons in the well in Agia but there should be more buried somewhere else in Agia" he says…
"Why do you say that?"
"Because they had told me that they had killed 19 Greek Cypriot soldiers… Plus, a Turkish officer had given them the dead bodies of 3 more Greek Cypriot soldiers… So that makes it 22… Since they only found 14, it means that there should be 8 more buried somewhere in Agia… But a lot of my friends from Agia passed away… Even the person who showed the location of the well has passed away… I will see what I can do" he says…
Previously he had shown us an area where inside a ditch they had buried some "missing" Greek Cypriots… This place was outside Agia Kepir… But no digging has been done there yet…
"You know, on the 14th of August 1974, an order came to empty the Turkish Cypriot villages from this area, Agia, Melousha and so on… But they had caught these 19 Greek Cypriot prisoners… As they were ordered to leave, they wanted to know what to do with the prisoners… As I gather from what my friends had told me, they were given an order from high above to kill them… So that's how they killed them…"
They had orders to leave but I had heard that they had never left… So I need to do more investigation in Agia…
"Remember the place I showed you, the ditch?"
"Yes…"
"Around there, they had fighting… Some Greek Cypriots coming from Athienou were killed… Later on UNFICYP would come to this area…"
My beautiful, beautiful readers, always trying to help in good faith, with a clean heart…
Always telling us the truth as they have heard it, as they know it…
My beautiful, beautiful readers, leaving aside their work, coming to meet us, show us what they know, share with us what they heard or what they witnessed…
We are trying to clean the dirt of the past half century…
And there is a lot of dirt…
In the fields, in the wells, in the ditches, under the asphalt, the ugly, scarred face of our country stares at us and waits for us to clean it up…
To clean it up so that we can start afresh for the future…
2.7.2016
Photo: The field in Mora we showed where remains of 4 "missing persons" were found...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 17th of July 2016, Sunday.
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