Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Good news from St. Hilarion cheers me up and makes me smile… Finally after seven years, digging has begun by the Cyprus Missing Persons' Commıttee in a place in the military zone in St. Hilarion and they have started finding remains of "missing persons" as my reader had described…
It was back in 2010 when one of my readers had told me about this burial site… He had been serving his military service there and had seen the remains of "missing" Greek Cypriots and he would draw a map and also give us names of who had been there… I had shared this information seven years ago with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, as well as with my readers both in YENIDUZEN and POLITIS…
He would be insistent, my reader and from time to time would ask me about this burial site but since St. Hilarion is a military zone, it would not be possible to go inside and show to the CMP the burial site, for many years to come…
In 2015 he would make an open call to CMP through my pages saying that he is ready to show them if they secure the permission to enter the area with them… We would publish this…
In 2016 we would visit him once again having found out that the CMP had not put this place on the list of places to be dug – we would go again to visit him together with officials of CMP and he would once again draw the map, tell them what he knows and would ask them to take permission for him so he can actually go and show them…
After some time, CMP would finally get permission for my reader to go and show and they would go together and my reader would point out the burial site…
Yesterday (13.1.2017) I would find out that the exhumation team of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee had begun digging in the place he had shown to them and that they had begun finding human remains…
I would call him and share this wonderful news with him and thank him for being insistent on this burial site for seven years…
Seven years is a long time but he never lost hope and he insisted and we wrote and we insisted and we pushed and finally, we are getting results…
Last year on the 12th of June 2016 I had written about this area… In summary I had written this:
`How many times we climbed this slope, higher and higher, to reach St. Hilarion?
How many times we came here?
We were here in the hot days of summer, we were here in the cold days of winter, we were here in springtime and autumn…
We were here, not out of fun but for the `missing persons` from the area…
We came so many times, with different witnesses, collecting information, showing possible burial sites…
St. Hilarion area, as a whole has been a tough area since it is a military zone as a whole so you cannot simply enter a military camp to show a possible burial site…
Now with the election of Mr. Mustafa Akinci to the leadership position of Turkish Cypriots, there has been a shift concerning possible burial sites in military zones and this is a very positive development, although it is not enough since half a century passed from the day people `disappeared` - if we look at 1963, 53 years have gone by, if we look at 1974, 42 years have gone by and many parents have passed away, waiting for any news from their loved ones… Wives died, children died waiting for news from their `missing` father…
…
That is why we are here once again to speak to the same witness we had spoken to six years ago…
In 2015 on these pages, I had written the story of the possible burial site of seven or eight `missing` Greek Cypriots in the area of St. Hilarion, inside a military camp area… I had said:
"One of my readers come to visit me at the newspaper where I work and we sit down to talk… We had visited him years ago together with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and he had drawn up a map of `gamini` and where the remains of some Greek Cypriot `missing` were buried at St. Hilarion. Now he comes to say that if the CMP can get permission to go into this area at St. Hilarion, he is ready to accompany them and show them the exact location of the `gamini` and the burial place of the remains of some `missing` persons.
He had been serving there at the St. Hilarion military camp when he had accidentally come across the remains of some `missing` Greek Cypriots. It had been a `gamini` where soldiers were using as a place to throw trash… As he ordered some soldiers to cleanse out the trash, there came out the remains of the `missing` Greek Cypriots who had been buried in the `gamini`. This accidental find ended up him having the soldiers remove the remains and bury further up... He had provided with detailed information about this incident to the officials of the CMP when we visited him and had drawn up a detailed map…
`You know` he says, `using this map, they accidentally found another `gamini` where the remains of some other `missing` Greek Cypriots had been buried, much further down… Actually the map served quite well but in a completely different way! A `gamini` in Boghazi was found because of that map… Some people looking at that map found that `gamini` and incidentally some other `missing` were buried there but the `gamini` on the map is actually not that one, but the one in the military camp… This is a humanitarian task and I am ready to show this place that I have provided the drawing to the CMP… I consider this as a humanitarian duty… To go and show I mean… Because just as Turkish Cypriots want the remains of their own `missing` persons to be found, the Greek Cypriot relatives also have the same right… Now it is time for humanity to speak up… Those who know any information should also speak up…`…"
We have learned that the place he indicated seven years ago as a possible burial site has not been marked on the list of military areas to be dug… So that is why we come once again to speak to him… We go with Xenophon Kallis, the Assistant to the Greek Cypriot Member of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and Okan Oktay, the anthropologist in charge of Exhumations of the CMP on the 11th of May 2016, Wednesday to visit this reader of mine…
He greets us and reminds us that he had drawn a map, had provided names who had been there… This had been seven years ago…
Once again he draws another map and promises to send me coordinates of the gamini (kiln) which was emptied and the secondary burial site of the remains of `missing persons` they had come across in the camp while he had been doing his military service at St. Hilarion…
`You know, all those remains, they were scattered… There was a whole skeleton but the rest of the bones looked as though they were collected from here and there and then buried inside the gamini` he explains… This was back in 1984-85… So many years have passed since then but he remembers clearly the details… It is not every day that you find remains and I am sure it made a mark on his heart – that is why he cannot forget and he insists that the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee should do something about this place…
Someone in charge at that time had collected golden teeth from this gamini and later he would sell these teeth in Kyrenia…`
Once again I appreciate the humanitarian help of my reader – may he always be a shining example of insistence, hope and courage in Cyprus…
14.1.2017
Photo: View from St. Hilarion...
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 12th of February 2017, Sunday.
(**) By the time this article was published yesterday, the remains being found increased from remains of one to remains of two "missing" persons...
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