A possible burial site in Dikomo…

A possible burial site in Dikomo…

Sevgul Uludag

caramel_cy@yahoo.com

Tel: 99 966518

On the morning of 10th of October 2017, Tuesday, we go together with Xenophon Kallis and Murat Soysal, the officials at the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee to meet a reader on the road to Dikomo…
Across the Near East University buildings, he showed us a possible burial site - this is the road going towards Dikomo and the possible burial site he showed us was to the right of the road, that is when you are face is towards Kyrenia and Nicosia would be behind you…
This was a fenced area, apparently a military zone so we could not enter and I could not take any photos. I only took one photo from the road…
Murat Soysal took the coordinates of this area...
According to my reader, this was a possible burial site... It used to be the rubbish damp of the UNFICYP before 1974... It was a deep cavity of seven meters and it was as wide as 20 meters by 40 meters. And now you could see the difference in the soil – that the soil had been heaped here later and this was visible…
Until the Annan Plan process, up until 2004 this was not a fenced area my reader has said...
He had heard that they had brought some "missing" Greek Cypriots in 1974 to be buried in this area in the garbage trucks of the Nicosia Turkish Cypriot municipality...
In fact there were testimonies from our readers about this particular UNFICYP rubbish damp in Dikomo in the past years that we had published on my pages in the YENIDUZEN newspaper...
According to my reader who showed us this possible burial site, this had been a cavity where the UNFICYP soldiers used to damp their rubbish…
"I had become suspicious since so much soil has been damped here afterwards and it is so high… I have also learned from some friends who live in Gochmenkeuy ("The Refugee Village" built after 1963 between Nicosia and Dikomo to house Turkish Cypriot refugees who had fled their homes in mixed villages) they had seen the rubbish collecting trucks full of bodies passing by in order to carry the "missing" bodies to this area…" he says.
From where we stand, we can see the heap of soil that is as high as five meters but according to my reader, if this was not a military area and we could have entered and if we walked towards the north, we would notice that the heap of soil would be less… This cavity was as deep as seven meters and its width and length was 20 meters by 40 meters… "You can imagine the size of this cavity" my reader says…
It will be clear when the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee would do an investigation if it decides to do that is, whether this was the area where some "missing" Greek Cypriots bodies had been buried here – they had been collected from around Omorphita and among them were old women as well…
I thank my reader who took his time to come with us and show us this possible burial site… I also thank the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee who have taken their time to come with us so that our reader could show them this place…
Back in 2009, one of my readers who had been part of the team who had collected the bodies of some "missing" Greek Cypriots from around Kaymakli (Omorphita) had told me that they had put them on the garbage trucks of the Nicosia Turkish Cypriot Municipality and that these trucks had gone to around the Dikomo rubbish damp area… Back in 2009, I had written and had published what he had told me on my pages in the YENIDUZEN newspaper… In summary, he had said:
*** War is a terrible thing. From what I saw and experienced in 1974, I am still under its impact… I want to share what I lived through with the hope that no such things will ever happen again in Cyprus…
*** I remember quite well the Greek Cypriot prisoners of war in the yard of the Arabahmet Primary School (at the garage Pavlides). All the prisoners of war were shaking… Before the UNFICYP had done a body count here, some days before they would read out 3 to 5 names each day and they would be taken away from there. When I was there, there had been around 800 prisoners there. And each day 5-6 prisoners would be taken away. Are they alive or are they "missing"? I don't know…
*** Where the GENCH TV is now (in 2009) there was an old car and three young Greek Cypriots had gone under it to hide. We were passing from there and one from our group who was not a soldier but who had a gun, he started shooting and he said "I saw some people hiding under the car…"
One of those Greek Cypriot youngsters died and one of them wounded. They were reservists. One of them was a short person. One of them was shot from under his feet… They had been students in Greece, studying there and had come for holidays. R. would question them. Two of them were brothers but one of them had died under the car… We had taken them to the police station at Neapolis… What happened to them? I wonder…
*** When you pass the "Vestel" building in Kaymakli (Omorphita) there is a kindergarten there (in 2009). In that house three persons were hiding… We had found them there. They were in uniform but without guns. One of them had no clothes on his top. They were searching for clothes in this house, so they could change their clothes. We took them to the house on columns. This house is on the corner coming from Hamit Mandrez towards Omorphita, on the junction… (My reader would on a later date would show me and the officials of the CMP this house…) It was the house on the right. Previously it was a house on columns, but now the facade has changed, and the ground floor is enclosed. There was this person called Y. here. When we took these three prisoners there, he was sitting inside. We had taken them to ask him where to take these prisoners. He just took out his gun and shot one of them, so I ran outside… Y. had shot all three of them… (Further investigation showed that they might have been buried in the basement of this house my reader mentions…)
*** Then we went as support to the 55th squad in Kaymakli (Omorphita)… After you pass the Kaymakli Sports Club, there was the elementary school and further down there is the church… Inside this church were 15 young Greek Cypriot soldiers, they had executed all of them inside the church. There was an A4 gun, a Turkish officer did not know how to install its strip of bullets and one of our Turkish Cypriot soldiers had put it in place and they had executed them from a close distance with this A4. They had been taken to this church, the Agios Dimitrianos Church as prisoners of war. There had also been women prisoners, but they were sent away… Then we put wooden bars on the doors of the church so the UNFICYP would not come and see this scene…
*** After a few days, Kaymakli (Omorphita) became very smelly and then they distributed some masks made of cloth to all of us. The garbage trucks of the municipality had been taken there. These were trucks that the sides opened, the old style, this type of trucks. We found some sheets and some blankets from the houses and we wrapped those dead Greek Cypriot soldiers in these and put them on these garbage trucks. We also collected the dead civilian Greek Cypriots from the houses and put them on these trucks. For instance, there was a bedridden old woman in Kaymakli (Omorphita) – she was dead and was smelling. In the government housing area there were dead bodies – there were also some very old people who had died on their own probably – they were puffed up… We would collect them and put them on the garbage trucks…
*** When these trucks had come, they already had dead bodies in them… So this was not unique to Kaymakli (Omorphita) only… There were other trucks collecting bodies from other neighbourhoods… In those days our faces were full of boils, the terror and horror we lived through collecting dead bodies, the smell of death would be all over our body…
*** Later we would hear that they would take all these bodies of "missing persons" to the area of where the Dikomo rubbish damp is… Another rumour was that they were buried close to the university building that was built later… We also heard that some of them were buried around the Kyrenia Boghazi military cemetery… And we also heard that that some of them was burned – there were a lot of civilian personnel working in this and also some from the municipality. The bodies were carried with the rubbish collecting trucks… Years later, I would start thinking that maybe the Dikomo rubbish damp was created in order to hide these bodies…
*** These are the first things that come to my mind… Such things we should never live again and may our children never see such things… Throughout our lives we could never forget what we saw… I want my children never to witness such things and grow out without such experiences…

22.12.2017

Photo: Behind me to the right in the military zone is a possible burial site...

(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 14th of January 2018, Sunday. The article was published in the YENİDÜZEN newspaper on the 21st of November 2017 in Turkish and the link is:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/dikomoda-olasi-gomu-yeri-11557yy.htm