Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
We are again on the roads, in the last two days we go to the Messaoria and Karpaz together with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, meeting witnesses, showing possible burial sites…
Our first stop on the 17th of August 2016 Wednesday in the morning is Messaoria… Here at one of the villages we meet one of my readers and through his help go to meet a witness.
We are together with Xenophon Kallis, Assistant to the Greek Cypriot Member of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and Halil Sayin, a young investigator of the CMP.
We meet with my reader and follow him to the house of the witness.
In Mora earlier this year in a place we had shown with one other reader, the remains of four `missing` Greek Cypriots were found… Now at the house of the witness, this new witness says `There should have been not four but 15 `missing` Greek Cypriots buried there… Why could not they find them? Maybe they buried them elsewhere? But we knew that there were 15 Greek Cypriots there…`
My reader is from Messaoria as well and as he had called me a couple of weeks ago, he was speaking of the `missing` Greek Cypriots at Agia Kebir… The number of `missing` Greek Cypriots found in Agia was 14 and this made my reader very uncomfortable…
`There were 19 Greek Cypriots held as prisoners of war and they were killed in Agia… A Turkish officer had also given them 3 Greek Cypriots who had been killed in the war, to be buried. Therefore, those `missing` in Agia should be 22 but they found 14. So somewhere there must be 8 more `missing` Greek Cypriots buried… Unfortunately, all those in my age group are dying…` he had said.
This reader had shown us three years ago, on the 2nd of August 2013 a possible burial site between Agia and Melousha… Some Greek Cypriots had dug military ditches on the 20th of July 1974 between Agia Kebir and Melousha. They had built a military post there and the following morning they had exchanged fire… Then nothing happened… After the 14th of August 1974, some Turkish Cypriots had been ordered to bury the dead bodies around that area and they had used the ditch to do that.
Some Turkish Cypriots of Melousha knew there was a mass burial there and from time to time would come to search for rings or watches since this was not a deep burial…
This reader had also heard that next to the canteen of the military camp in Lyssi there was a burial site and he had met us and shown us this area, as well as the area where the ditch had been… We had been together with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee so that these possible burial sites could be investigated and put on the official list to be dug…
In those days I had called one of my Greek Cypriot friends from Lyssi and had asked him to find out about this ditch. He had good friends in Athienou so he would go there and would find out the person who had dug that ditch and had worked on a map and he would send me the coordinates of that ditch. And I would pass these coordinates to the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee for further investigation. I had also passed on information about where this ditch was, who the field belonged to and things like that.
No digging has been done yet at either the ditch or in Lyssi next to the military camp so when and if there is digging, we will find out whether these are actually mass burial sites…
So this is the reader we have met in Messaoria who has led us to another witness.
The witness welcomes us warmly and tells us that he wants to help. He talks of a new possible burial site in this area…
`There is a water depot at the exit of Tremetousia village` he says. `Here there is a dirt track that goes to Troulli village. They had buried two `missing` Greek Cypriots here. They had shot them about 100 meters away from the water depot and had sent a shiro to bury them… The only shiro in this area was in ….. village and I believe that the shiro came from there` he says.
He also gives us the name of the guy who had owned the shiro and tells us that he is alive…
He gives us another name and says that he also knows about this burial site.
The person who had shot these two Greek Cypriots had killed them for their money, he says.
`First he told them `Go away from here, walk… We are setting you free` and then he had shot them from their backs… Of course after taking their money…`
`And then he went to Australia and never returned…`
Of course he must not have been alone while doing that – probably he had people with him… And those around him would help to cover up these murders and make these two Greek Cypriots `disappear` and bury them with a shiro… The two Greek Cypriots whom they had killed, our witness explains, were never involved in anything against the Turkish Cypriots, on the contrary they had good relations with Turkish Cypriots. And always they had tried to protect Turkish Cypriots as much as they humanly could… But this would be their tragic end… All for money…
`When you leave me go to the water depot and see the place` he says…
He also tells us about the killings in Aphania back in 1974…
`Aphania was under the command of Chatoz. A major came to Aphania and told the Turkish Cypriots there to line up the Greek Cypriot prisoners of war in front of a wall. The Turkish Cypriots would line them up… Then the major would tell them `Shoot them!` One of the Turkish Cypriots said to the major, `Sorry sir, I cannot shoot them…` So the major told the Turkish Cypriot, `Then leave your gun and you go and stand with them…`
So that is how these Greek Cypriots had been killed. These people were buried and then their burial sites emptied… In the emptying of the wells some Turkish Cypriots from Sinda village were used. They had carried the remains, the bones with the truck that belonged to …..`
He gives us names of those who carried these `missing` remains…
We thank this witness and leave him to go to Tremetousia…
My reader tells me that there is another burial site at a place called Ayphoti and he will arrange for us to meet another witness on another day…
So we all go to Tremetousia and find the water depot as the witness had described it to us… We find the dirt track that connects Tremetousia with Troulli… Kallis walks around to check the area…
He tells us that there is a place behind the depot that looks a bit suspicious…
My reader tells me about the hills around this area…
There is the Margo Hill – after 1974 they changed the name to Tiniz Tepesi… At the back of this hill is Athienou and to the west Piroi… Now Piroi is a military zone… He talks about some possible burial sites in Piroi but it is impossible for us to go there and check since it is a military zone…
We take photos of the water depot and the surroundings and Halil Sayin takes the coordinates of the area… Since our witness has given us a lot of details, the next thing would be to investigate further about this possible burial site…
We thank our reader and promise to meet again and go back to Nicosia… The next day we would go to Livadia but this, I will tell in another article…
3.9.2016
Photo: At the water tanks in Tremetousia that our witness informed us about...
(*) Article published in POLITIS newspaper on the 18th of September 2016, Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment