Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Digging begins in Lapithos, Gypsou and Kato Zodia around the week of 18th of February 2019 by the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and it is interesting to look at these areas more closely and what we had done in the past about them together with my wonderful Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot readers… We need to `refresh memory` so that this information is not `lost` in a dusty file and we need to push for more information through our readers so that we can help the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee in their work…
In Lapithos the excavations and surveys by the archaeologists of the CMP are in the area commonly known as `Near the Celebrity Hotel area` that I had written about more than a decade ago…
My readers had ample information about this area and they kept on calling and pointing out the same area…
Many of my Turkish Cypriot readers had been testifying that there was a burial site within the fenced area here… Some of them actually had seen human remains in this area and some of them who had worked in the fencing of the area were witnesses as they had seen these human remains scattered around…
There were other readers who had told me that one day some fishermen of the area were instructed to collect the remains, put them in bags and go out to the sea and throw the bags in the sea… My readers were claiming that this was what had happened many decades after 1974… They were even providing names of those fishermen involved and I was sharing every single piece of information that came to me through readers with the officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, as well as publishing these stories on my pages in the newspaper YENIDUZEN.
In 2015 the CMP had done some excavations in this fenced area and could only find the remains of four `missing` Greek Cypriots – there were very few remains there… Now as I understand, they are doing surveys of the area in order to see if they can find more remains…
There was another point close to this area that one of my readers had shown me and to the officials of the CMP exactly eight years ago… We had gone there around the 19th of December 2011 as far as I remember and he had shown us a possible burial site where they had been encountering human remains… As far as I know, there has been no excavations by CMP there in the past eight years… On the 19th of December 2011, I had written about how we went there with officials of CMP and how our reader had shown us this possible burial site… I had said:
*** This is a place to the right side of the dirt track that leads to the fishermen's place and my reader told us that he had encountered human remains here. Further up is the area to the west of the Rita on the Rocks which is a fenced area and many of our readers had given information about this possible burial site that we wrote about as early as 2008… In those days one of our readers, after reading what we had written had called us and said that one of his friends was working as a registrar after 1974 and he was making a list of houses for the Turkish Cypriots who would come as refugees from the southern part of our island to the northern part to be settled… He had seen that the beach front around Rita on the Rocks was full of dead bodies and he had notified the health officials and they came and put some lime over the dead bodies… Later on some soldiers would come and collect these bodies and had buried them somewhere around there…
Digging also begins in Gypsou in the week of 18th February 2019… Ten years ago there had been some excavations by the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee in Gypsou where the cemetery is and now new excavations have been started in the Gypsou cemetery area where they are looking for 5-6 `missing` Greek Cypriots who had been buried together there…
Exactly 10 years ago we had gone to Gypsou on the 20th of January 2009 with a Greek Cypriot old reader who had shown us some possible burial sites in Gypsou… Later on in those same days, I had shown these possible burial sites to the investigators of the CMP and had given them detailed information.
After 1974, just like Voni and Marathovouno, Gypsou too had been turned into `prisoners of war` camp and in this village were around 500 Greek Cypriots, in Marathovouno around 500 and in Voni around 800… They were held there and due to terrible conditions, some old people had died in Gypsou and they had been buried in different parts of the village… Both UNHCR and the Red Cross had expressed worries about the harsh conditions in these places in a report to the UN Secretary General on the 18th of September 1974.
According to my readers, around 20 old persons – some of them bedridden – had died due to old age and/or lack of care and had been buried in different parts of the village.
In January 2009, I had written about these and had said:
*** One of our Greek Cypriot readers came with us and we went together to Gypsou so he could show us the possible burial site of a Greek Cypriot from Akanthou who had died in Gypsou. According to this reader he had been buried in a well and our reader showed us the location of this well…
*** This well is on the way out of Gypsou, very close to the garbage damp of Gypsou. The mouth of the well was open and since some trash were dumped in this well, we could not confirm whether what our Greek Cypriot reader was saying was true or not. We gave information about the exact location of this well to the CMP.
*** Around 20 old Greek Cypriots had died in Gypsou and they were buried in different places around the village, including a certain spot in the Greek Cypriot cemetery. The CMP had dug for some time in the cemetery but could not find any "missing" buried there…
As far as I know, there has been no digging in the possible burial sites we had shown to the investigators of CMP ten years ago in January 2009… I have not heard anything about it at all…
If you have any information about Gypsou or Lapithos, please call me with or without your name on my CYTA mobile phone at 99 966518… We need to push and we need to help and we need to refresh memory so that those places we had shown a decade ago, do not go unnoticed and forgotten amongst dusty files…
Photo: Archaeologists digging in Lapithos in February 2019. Foto by CMP
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 17th of March 2019, Sunday. A similar article was published on my pages in YENIDUZEN entitled "Cyprus: The Untold Stories" on the 5th of March 2019 and here is the link:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/kayiplar-icin-kazilarda-akovada-iki-laptada-bir-kisinin-kalintilari-bulundu-13704yy.htm
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