Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
One of my readers, a wonderful Turkish Cypriot who has been helping us for many years to find possible burial sites in the Mesaoria region has written a short story about what happened to those Greek Cypriots who were taken as prisoners of war in Voni, in the house of Frosso Dimou and then they all "disappeared" for many years… They were taken prisoners by a group of Turkish Cypriots from nearby villages… Today, I want to share his story… The following story is what he has written to me, after the remains of five Greek Cypriots buried at the Epiho rubbish dump were identified by the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and after they were returned for burial to their relatives… The sister of one of those Greek Cypriots had asked me about how her brother had died and whether he had suffered, whether he was tortured and what were the circumstances…
I asked my Turkish Cypriot reader who has been helping me for many years to write down what he knew… And he sat down and wrote a letter to the sister of that "missing" Greek Cypriot whose remains were found in the Epiho rubbish dump.
Here is his story, addressing the sister of one of the "missing" Greek Cypriots whose remains were found there:
"My dear sister,
I will write for you a short story… I heard that you wanted to know about how I was killed… It's been years since I was killed. My mother died, my father died… After they passed away, my bones were found in a rubbish dump…
I heard that you said "Thank God that my mother and father passed away before they would see us burying our brother…"
And I heard that you said "My brother was in a rubbish dump for many years…"
Don't be sad… Where the remains of the dead persons are is not important for them… But it is important for you… This I know… You want to remember the one who died, to memorise old days, to go and pray for him… I don't need that.
What I needed was days to live… Days to be alive…
I could not even have a kid…
I could not even make love with a woman as much as I wanted…
My sweat did not even mix with the sweat of a woman as much as I wanted…
We died for those who do not know the meaning of life, for their unbelievable ideologies… Their ideologies were not even my ideology… It wasn't even a thought I would follow to the end…
Then why did we die?
I died for the defense of my country… But without honour…
No, no, it is not me who has no honour… It is those who have killed me, the ones without honour.
What makes a human a real human is his or her honour.
Honour is the self-respect of a human being.
Honour is the value and the respect that a person feels for his or her own personality… It is the internal value of a human being…
A human being lives for its honour and kills for its honour…
With honour and with self-respect, he would kill with respect he feels towards the enemy. He kills while fighting… And then he feels respect for the person he has killed because his enemy was so strong and fearless…
We were with honour, we had accepted the defeat. But we were fearless.
We surrendered ourselves without fearing death… But we were wrong… The enemy group that arrested and killed us had no honour. They were such a group without honour that they would bury their enemy inside a rubbish dump.
If I had an enemy, I would hold him high… Because I would not pull the trigger against an enemy without honour. They are not my enemies… These were people who hid my burial site, my grave and threw trash over me in order to hide my burial site. They cannot be my enemies…
My enemy would be the one confronting me, looking me in the eye and fighting with me…
My enemies are not the ones who would put us on a truck after we would surrender and kill some of those on the truck by using their bayonets… These cannot be my enemies… This group was a group who did not go to fight and after the war would appropriate the victory of war… A bunch of vagabonds…
My enemies should have been as honourable as me… They should have been honourable in order not to pull a gun and pull the trigger to those who had surrendered.
I heard that you were asking how we had been killed…
If this would make your pain less, let me tell you but please don't cry…
When we lost the war, we went to a woman's house and sought shelter there in Voni…
She gave us clothes… She gave us food to eat… And then we started waiting for the UN soldiers to come… But the house we were in were surrounded by the enemy (!) and we surrendered… But before we surrendered, we had given our names to be written down by the woman in whose house we had taken shelter.
Many of us knew the man who took us as prisoners of war. They knew both him and his father… His father was one who had eaten the bread of some of us who had surrendered… They put us on a truck… When taking us up on a truck, they used their bayonets to wound us. Because we could not fit in the truck, all 45 of us, they killed one of us to make space… One of us died… We could not revolt for the one who died… They took us through a small village at the back of the truck and we were going towards Chatoz. While passing through this small village called Beykeuy, kids were watching us… But believe me, we were not thinking that we were going to be killed. A lot of us waved to the kids who were playing by the side of the road while we were passing through that village. And of course the kids waved back at us…
A military jeep was following us… On it was an A4 type of gun and this jeep was behind the truck, following us… It never crossed our mind that we were going to be killed. They were taking us as prisoners to Chatoz village…
While passing from near a cemetery, the truck turned into a dirt track near the cemetery… And then we realized that they were going to kill us… And about 500 meters further, they got us off the truck…
We wanted to escape and we spoke amongst us, we were going to run and escape… And then we heard that ear screeching sound… In the same moment, about 25 of us fell on top of each other. Some of us got wounded… And then the sound of the machine gun stopped. It had got stuck…
The guy who was behind the machine gun shouted an order, saying "Kill all of them!"
We ran and they followed us… Within a thousand meters, they killed all those who had been wounded one by one… They shot me from behind. I did not suffer… I ran with the hope of escaping… Next to me were two of my friends with whom we lay down together for many years in the rubbish dump…
We had escaped around 20 of us…
Three of us, we were shot from behind… When the gun of the enemy got stuck, one from our group was killed by crushing his skull…
One of us had taken shelter in the house of an old Turkish Cypriot woman in Epiho… He had been wounded… He was found and taken from this house and a bayonet was stuck in his wound and taken to the centre of the village… He was killed in the centre of the village while people were watching and then they tried to burn his body… For many years they did not dig where he had been buried although they knew his place… Really, why were they not digging for him for so many years? Perhaps they knew something that we did not know… Recently they started digging for him and it became apparent that because of the smell, one of the villagers took his burned body further up and reburied him under the eucalyptus trees… The eucalyptus trees have been cut but only one eucalyptus tree remained to mark his burial site, like a monument… Perhaps finally, they will find his remains and give these remains back to his family…
When he was killed and fell on the ground in the centre of the village, they had taken his boots and his belt saying "These are good…"
Nine or ten of us were used like a target and were killed. One of us tried to escape towards the village where we had surrendered. He too was wounded but I don't know what happened to him…
I heard that you were curious about how we died… That you were asking whether we had been tortured… If we felt fear realizing that we were dying…
We understood death but we did not fear… We did not feel fear but the bunch of guys who were supposed to be our enemies had no honour. They killed us without accepting that we were their enemies and killed us without honour. We had fought a war for nothing because this group of people had no honour. Dying was not the bitterness we felt… The lack of honour of this bunch of guys was what was bitter about the whole thing… Without having enough time to make love with a woman, without having a child of my own… That's what has killed me, above all…
And what happened to us in this small village in Mesaoria, happened further up… With similar bunch of guys from our own side who had no honour and who would kill in the same way, unarmed, civilian women and children and bury them in the same way they buried us in a rubbish dump in Maratha… The ones without honour from our side from EOKA-B and the ones without honour from the other side who took us from Voni were like identical twins in their ideology and in their attitude and in the way they behaved – neither of them went to the war to fight but tried to rip off the "victory" after the war… Neither of them had the honour to respect their "enemy" and killed and buried them in rubbish dumps… Neither of them was ever punished by authorities on either side… On the contrary, they would rip off the "benefits" and "spoils" after the war and would be treated like "heroes"…
We lay down in the rubbish dump for so many years until they found our remains…
Funerals were held for us… Epiho and Maratha rubbish dumps became the shame of our country… Epiho and Maratha rubbish dumps are the same: They contained the bodies of those who were killed and hidden there – our bodies, the bodies of women and children and old men, people without defense, people who should have been alive but were killed because we have people in both communities who feel no shame and who have no honour…
So dear sister when you think of me, think of all the good people who lived and who continue to live on this island with human dignity, trying to protect the human dignity of all… And think of all those people who lack honour and human dignity and who buried bodies of those they have killed in Epiho and in Maratha-Sandallaris-Aloa… These people without honour are exactly the same even if they might speak different languages: Either Turkish or Greek, whether they are Turkish Cypriot or Greek Cypriot… Just as the good people of this land with human dignity are the same: whether they speak Turkish or Greek, whether they are Turkish Cypriot or Greek Cypriot… Seek those good people out sister and hold them close to your heart… Because humanity is there, not in the ones who lack honour and who pose as "heroes"… Seek out the real heroes of our land and hold them tight… They will be the hope for the future…"
(This article has been written by a Turkish Cypriot reader whose name is known and safe with us… He has been helping us finding the possible burial sites of missing persons and who helps us to write their stories… He too is one of the real heroes of our island… I thank him for his humanity… - 9.4.2019)
4.5.2019
Photos:
Bodies discovered at former rubbish damp of Maratha in 1974
And
This is how the place looked back in 2013 at Epikho rubbish damp…
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper in Greek on the 2nd of June 2019, Sunday. A similar article was published in the YENIDUZEN newspaper in Turkish on the 9th of April 2019 and here is the link:
http://www.yeniduzen.com/murataga-ve-galatya-katliamlari-anlatilacak-13849yy.htm
