Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
We are on the road again on the 18th of August 2016, Thursday morning…
This time we are going to Karpaz…
We are going together with Xenophon Kallis, the Assistant to the Greek Cypriot Member of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and Halil Sayin, one of the investigators of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee.
First we go to pick up our witness and then we go to Livadia (Sazlikeuy as it is called by Turkish Cypriots now) in Karpaz.
A few months ago, on the 28th of June 2016 Tuesday, we had come to Karpaz again.
One of my readers had informed us that he knew of a possible burial site in Livadia months ago and I had arranged for the Assistant of the Turkish Cypriot Member of CMP, Murat Soysal to go and meet him.
He had shown a field where a Greek Cypriot "missing person" had been buried in Livadia…
They had started digging but after some time had stopped so that is why he would call me to ask the reason why.
That is why we had gone to Karpaz on the 28th of June with the officials of the CMP to look at the field…
We had taken a witness and had gone to a field outside Livadia…
Our witness would tell us the story:
One night he was on duty at a military post not far from this field.
This was 1974…
Then some Turkish Cypriots whom he knew had come to his military post and told him, "You will hear some gun shots so don't panic… We are going to send the papaz of Davlos and Andrikko to their village…"
He had in fact heard gun shots after a little while…
On the next day, one of his superiors would tell our witness to take a tractor and go and plough the field outside Livadia…
According to our witness, in a well, they had buried the priest of Davlos and maybe another "missing" Greek Cypriot, Andrikko and had covered the well.
But since they did not want anyone to understand that they had buried some "missing" in that well, they had sent our witness to plough that field so that the mouth of the well would not be visible…
He had taken a tractor and had started ploughing the field but somehow the tractor would stop in the field where the well was and would not start. He would need another tractor to take the tractor out of the field…
"I had felt eerie having heard the gun shots the previous night" he would tell us…
Our witness had shown us this field and had told us about where the well might be…
We had thanked him and left Livadia – we were with Xenophon Kallis and Okan Oktay, the Coordinator of Exhumations of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee…
With the help of my dear friend Christina Pavlou Solomi Patsia, I had met the son of the priest of Davlos and had spoken with him…
And then I would ask questions about the priest of Davlos, Papachrisostomos to another reader…
Who was this priest?
Why he was killed in Livadia and not Galatia?
This reader would give me the phone of another witness and I would speak with that witness as well.
According to this new witness, the priest of Davlos, after being taken away from Davlos had never been taken to Galatia… He had been taken to Livadia directly and had been kept in the military building for a few days.
According to my reader, there was no one else with him, he had been alone…
"The person who took him to Livadia was from Galatia… So they knew he was being kept in Galatia I believe… And I guess, they must have been given orders to kill him and that is why they had killed him…"
This new witness that I found with the help of one of my readers knew where the well had been…
So that is why we would go to Livadia again on the 18th of August 2016 in order for this new witness to show us the place of the well in the same field we had shown before…
"They had dug this well in order to find water but did not find any water… They had left it open" he says…
Kallis asks him how deep the well might have been…
"As deep as a shiro can dig" he says… "They did not dig this well manually but with a bulldozer…"
"Because" he says, "they did not find any water in this well, they did not build the mouth of the well, as they would normally do… That is why you need to dig deep in this field in order to find this well – because it has no mouth in the traditional sense, it had not been built with stones… You need to dig as deep as possible in order to find this well… But as I remember" he says, "it was roughly around here… Not near the road, but towards here…"
"Who dug this well?" we ask him…
He gives us a name…
"He was the only one who had a shiro…"
We thank him and leave Livadia… After we drop him off in his house we get back to Nicosia.
I find another reader who is ready to help us to communicate with the person who had dug this well…
"Next time you come to Karpaz" he says, "come by… I will take you to him so you can speak and he can help…"
On our way back to Nicosia, we stop for a few minutes to meet another witness, the brother of one of my readers…
He heard about the digging in the Voni military area and he wants to share what he knows with us…
"You need to search behind the elementary school across the church of Voni" he says…
"As far as I know, they had buried some Greek Cypriots they had killed in Voni, behind the elementary school…"
I have helped the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee by arranging for some of our witnesses to go into the Voni military area and to show possible burial sites… Several witnesses went inside the military area and shared what they knew… As a journalist, I am not allowed inside military areas but this is no problem since what is important is for our witnesses to share what they know with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee…
I thank all my readers and our witnesses for sharing what they know with me, as well as with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee…
9.9.2016
Photo: According to the witness, this is the field where the well is…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 25th of September 2016, Sunday.
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