Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Digging begins in Voni, a village which is a `military zone` for finding the remains of `missing persons` there…
In 1974 this village was turned into a `prisoners of war camp` and people from surrounding villages were taken here to stay…
I had a series of interviews with Greek Cypriots who had stayed there, as well as speaking with Alpay Topuz who had been given the task to ensure safety and running of things in the camp… The first thing Alpay Topuz did was to stop the rapes in the camp… That is why a few years ago we awarded him with a plaquette for trying to help out during the time he had been there and trying to humanize the camp and for stopping the rapes…
When a Turkish Cypriot official from the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee asked me last week whether I have witnesses for the burial sites, I would give him some names and find some of my readers' testimonies about possible burial sites in Voni… For the past 10 years, I have shared these testimonies with my readers… Today I want to share some of these with you…
On 22 November 2006 – that is ten years ago – one of my readers had told me that it is not only the `missing persons` who are buried in the Voni camp. He said:
"It is not only `missing persons` who were buried in and around the Voni camp in 1974. There were also some elderly Greek Cypriots who had died there and they too were buried there. If the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee digs behind the school, they will find the burials there… As I remember they were four or five elderly Greek Cypriots…`
On the 1st of January 2008, another reader told me that there had been some burials behind the church in Voni. He said:
`Some Greek Cypriots who had been killed in this area were buried behind the Voni church. We had dug a big hole there and had buried them there…
Another burial site connected with Voni is this: If you go towards the north from the Timbou (Ercan) junction after about 400 meters, there begins the Voni stream… This Voni stream continues all the way up to Beykeuy for 2 kilometres. There had been heavy fighting around here. If the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee digs this stream from the junction of Ercan up to Beykeuy, I believe at a depth of one meter, they will find the remains since I also encounter these remains – due to the rains, the bones come out…`
Another reader shared something else on the 27th of July 2008 and I wrote what he said:
`Some time ago we saw that an excavation team of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee was digging a point near Voni – it was a well and this digging took a long time. Then we heard that they found a single person in the well.
From the point of this excavation, there is an orchard of olives 50 meters towards the north. Under these olive trees a group of 8-10 Greek Cypriot `missing persons` are buried. If the eastern part of this group of olive trees is excavated, they will see that this group of `missing` Greek Cypriots are buried there and they will find the remains.
In the past this was NOT a military area. We used to take our animals grazing there… Around 10 or 15 years ago, all of a sudden the military had cut this area with wires and we were no longer allowed to go there…`
And another reader on the 8th of February 2009 had told me the following:
"We have been readıng your articles about Kythrea… There used to be a shepherd from Kythrea whom we knew. This shepherd was Kypros Kolios… Kypros Kolios was arrested in Kythrea and was taken to the Voni camp. And then one night he was taken from the Voni church and killed.
I know where he is buried.
This place is on the west of the school, under some fig trees. There used to be a road on the west of the school and this was a field road… He was buried next to the last house there. And he was not alone… He had been buried with a group of 6-7 others. The Shepherd Kypros was around 50 and he was a civilian…
The person who killed him was from … village. The wife of Shepherd Kypros, Sotira, was a very good person. She was a few years younger than her husband. She spoke Turkish perfectly well. During the time Mrs. Sotira was in the Voni camp, she used to cook for the prisoners there… As I remember, Shepherd Kypros had also his daughters in the camp. One of these girls was a hairdresser and I believe one of them was going to high school. And another one of his daughters was either working in a bank or in a government department…
If the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee digs the place I am describing to you, they will find the remains of our friend the Shepherd Kypros, as well as the others…`
I had asked my dear friend Maria Georgiadou from Kythrea about the Shepherd Kypros and had found out that he had five daughters and a small son and that they had stayed in the Voni camp until October 1974…
Digging also begins last week in Komikebir, in an area outside the village called `Apelandros`… This had been the place where remains of 12 `missing` Greek Cypriots from Komikebir and Ephtakomi had been found some years ago…
I had written about this area years ago and had gone with a reader some years ago where he had shown me a place that one of his friends had found suspicious. I had shown this place few years ago to the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee.
But on the 28th of June 2016, we would go again with one of my readers and he would call his friend who had suspicions about this particular area… My dear friend from Komikebir, Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia, officials of the CMP, Okan Oktay and Xenophon Kallis would also be with us.
The witness would come on a small motorbike and under the scorching sun we would walk towards the place I had shown the committee some years ago.
The place has changed completely – there had been a big shinya that has been uprooted – they have cleared the field and have planted some new olive trees…
The witness who is with us tells us that he had seen an excavated ditch that had been filled with soil that was some 5-10 meters long… He had thought `Why would anyone dig a ditch here in the middle of nowhere?` and years later as the remains of 12 `missing persons` would be found further up, his suspicions would get stronger and he would show this area to my reader and he would show it to me and I would show it to the officials of the CMP… But today he is here to show it himself to us and I am thankful for this… My reader has convinced him to come here and I invite him to have lunch with us in a nearby village restaurant but he carefully declines since he does not want to be seen together with us… People are still very cautious and very careful when it comes to sharing information about `missing persons`… Villages are small places and we know how Cypriots like to gossip and make up `Hollywood stories` about everything you can imagine… But I am thankful that I have had enough readers in the past 15 years with enough humanity in their hearts and who have shared what they know…
As we stop in a village restaurant to quickly eat something, the restaurant owner who is one of my readers points out someone and says `He knows a place where a Greek Cypriot had been buried…`
I turn around to say hello to this person and ask him to come and show us this place…
`No, no` he says, `I don't want to be involved…`
`But the restaurant owner will take you in his car and we will just stop by and you can show us quickly and he will take you back…` I tell him.
The restaurant owner smiles and says, `Of course… When you finish eating, we go together…`
So this person in the restaurant is convinced and we drive to Famagusta Boghazi where, under the eucalyptus trees he shows us a possible burial site.
We take photos and coordinates…
According to this witness there used to be a house and in the front a sort of small tavern or periptero here but it has been demolished… We can still see where it stood…
Here was one person who lived and who had the small tavern, a Greek Cypriot from Boghazi…
According to this witness he was killed and buried under the eucalyptus trees…
From where we stand we can see the blue Mediterranean and under the eucalyptus trees I stand to think about this unknown `missing person` to us, about what might have happened here…
We thank this witness and the restaurant owner takes him in his car and we wave goodbye and they go their own way and us, we head back to Nicosia…
Last week after Mr. Okan Oktay, the Coordinator of Exhumations of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee calls me and asks me whether I have any witnesses to actually go inside the military zone at Voni and show them the possible burial sites, I start thinking which one of my readers would be willing to do that. Then one friend calls and offers help from his father who actually took part in the burial in Voni… I would tell Okan Oktay and Xenophon Kallis from the CMP so they would arrange and go together with the father of one of my readers – our witness who buried some Greek Cypriots in Voni – and they go on the 19th of July 2016 Tuesday and the old man shows them the location where he had buried some "missing" Greek Cypriots.
I thank my reader and his father for their humanitarian help and I thank Okan Oktay and Xenophon Kallis from CMP who took him to Voni to show the place he had buried the people under some mulberry trees… I thank the officials of the CMP for making the necessary arrangements so that my reader's father – our witness – could go and show…
16-19.7.2016
Photo: Kallis investigating possible burial site in Boghazi...
(*) Article published on the 31st of July 2016, Sunday in POLITIS newspaper.
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