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[iceman]

It’s time to tell the truth
By Stefanos Evripidou

WHY do people bury their dead? What is it that makes us dig a hole, perform a ceremony and leave our loved ones underground with a symbol protruding from the earth as a reminder to the world that they too once felt the wind on their cheeks? History is littered with gruesome wars and somewhere in all that brutality one can usually find an agreement between the warring sides for exchange of the dead. Each society has its own way of dealing with the departed. Whether it be burial, cremation in a coffin or bodies burning on a pyre, the rites of death share their history with the birth of man.

'Burying the dead' in its metaphorical sense is vital to our regeneration. It provides a sense of closure and allows those left behind to get on with life. Visually, as the coffin is lowered into the earth or the body burnt, the mind has to acknowledge that the person lost is lost forever. Their physical manifestation will no longer play a role on this earth. Nor can we harbour an expectation that they will reappear at a later stage. As Irish poet Donall Dempsey put it: they become invisible to the naked eye.

Burying loved ones also allows the bereaved to honour their dead, to reflect on their loss and to share their grief with others. No one can take away the quiet cloud of sorrow that death brings, but sharing that grief in a public space goes some way in alleviating the pain.

Acknowledgement of physical loss, recognition of the life story ended and the sharing of grief are all necessary components for continuing with life after being deprived by death. But how can one move on when there is no body to bury? How can one avoid stasis when the three components above are replaced by undying hope, anguish and uncertainty? How do a people bury the past and move forward without first acknowledging the past? Without feeling the coarse rub of the forgotten earth in our hands and seeing the dried blood stains, how can we start digging a new grave?

There are 1,924 people still missing in Cyprus as a result of the violence of the past. For almost three decades, the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) has had little or no success in establishing the fate of those missing either from the inter-communal conflicts in the 1960s or the invasion of 1974. In the last year, around 400 remains of people have been found, and 71 of them identified and returned to their families for burial. The ball is finally rolling. Relatives may still wear black, but their hope has been put to rest and the kind of mourning only associated with true knowledge of death begins, a full 30 or 40 years after the first realisation of loss.

Peace activist Sevgul Uludag believes the case of the missing is not just about finding bones. It's a basic question about who did what to whom. But the mandate of the CMP does not cover cause of death or attribution of responsibility. Effectively, we are unearthing brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers from the ground, identifying them and burying them again. But who killed these people? How were they killed? Where? And why? Are we not concerned by the mass graves and evident massacres perpetrated by each community against the other?

Individual researchers and investigators like Uludag, Politis editor Andreas Paraschos and film-maker Antonis Angastiniotis have come face to face with the truth. Through their work, they have also amassed information on the perpetrators of these crimes. What do we want to do with this information? There is a startling absence of debate on these issues. We have our heads in the sand while our history books remain tainted. We do not need to wait for the elusive comprehensive settlement to decide on this. In fact, for any settlement to stand a chance, it should be preceded by truth and reconciliation of all the communities on the island. It is the first thing we should do and not the last.

As Paraschos put it, there are countries around the world that have faced up to their past, spoken and written on the truth, then moved on. He does not believe a similar fate will lend itself to Cyprus. “There is no way we can face the truth. The criminals here are heroes on both sides.”

Human rights lawyer Achileas Demetriades believes the issue of the missing and the crimes committed should not be left to the lawyers to sort out. In the case of Varnava v. Turkey in the European Court of Human Rights, Turkey was found guilty of inhuman treatment by failing to carry out a proper investigation into missing persons captured in 1974. In its defence, Turkey argued that the CMP was doing the work on its behalf; but the Court ruled that the bicommunal committee was unable to take meaningful steps to ascertain the fate of the missing. Now, two Greek Cypriot families are taking the Republic of Cyprus to court for breach of human rights, for failure to inform them of the fate of their loved ones. Ironically, the Republic is also citing the work of the CMP in its defence.

Demetriades asks some pertinent questions. Is the CMP an adequate remedy or do the families wish to see justice served? No criminal investigations have been launched to date, despite the unearthing of around 400 bodies. There is a de facto immunity in place, set by the Attorney-general so as not to obstruct the work of the CMP.

“Are we going to change the CMP? It's the only bicommunal organ working, actually doing something. Are we going to rock the boat? Or say yes, this is the proper mandate, not just to identify remains, but investigate the circumstances of death and attribute blame. It's better we decide this together than leave it to the lawyers,” says Demetriades.

These questions have yet to be answered. Society has not been asked whether it wants to trade information for immunity from criminal prosecution. The people have not been asked whether they want to see truth and remorse or punishment.

“You have a right to know. Can we face the truth? Do we want to?” asks Demetriades.

In answering these questions we need to transcend the time spectrum and think hard about the past, present and future. How much do we really know about our past? How is our perception of the past affecting the now, and what do we really want for the future? Do we want to see Nuremberg-type trials in Cyprus where criminals are prosecuted? Or are we interested in a South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) where the full truth of crimes committed on all sides is written and the perpetrators forced to seek amnesty? Or are we satisfied with identifying and burying our dead?

According to the TRC website, the Commission was set up to deal with what happened under apartheid. It speaks of violence and human rights abuses from all sides, not just the white government forces, but also the ANC. No section of society escaped these abuses, it says. Former Justice Minister Dullah Omar said the Commission was necessary “to enable South Africans to come to terms with their past on a morally accepted basis and to advance the cause of reconciliation”.

If the idea is to start afresh under one umbrella then we really must shed our clothes. Every new-born starts life naked and so must we if we are to co-exist as our leaders keep promising us we will.

Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2008

http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.ph ... 3&cat_id=1

The question is,will we ever be able to face the truth

[iceman]

another excellent related article by Evripidou


‘Burying our sins along with our sons’
By Stefanos Evripidou

CYPRUS has 1,924 people still missing from the inter-communal strife in the 1960s and the Turkish invasion of 1974. When the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) was set up under the auspices of the UN in 1981, the figure was 1,995; 502 Turkish Cypriots and 1,493 Greek Cypriots.

But as Politis chief editor Andreas Paraschos noted, there is no flag or nationality in a mother's face, only pain and suffering. Around 40 of the Greek Cypriots went missing in the 1960s, the majority were lost in 1974. Many of the Turkish Cypriots went missing before the invasion.

July 2007 is described by the CMP as a turning point in the fate of the missing. For the first time in its 26-year history, the CMP was able to identify and return the remains of 71 people to their families for proper burial. One cannot underestimate the power of hope. Knowing the fate of loved ones is crucial to the life of those left behind.

The CMP is one of the only institutionalised bicommunal committees operating in Cyprus, with a Greek Cypriot, Turkish Cypriot and UN-appointed foreign member. A bi-communal team of 18 archaeologists and anthropologists are responsible for carrying out exhumations on both sides of the buffer zone. Formal identification of skeletal remains is established by a team of anthropologists (from the CMP laboratory) and geneticists (from the Laboratory of Forensic Genetics of the CING).

As of last month, the remains of 373 individuals were exhumed from different burial sites located across the island. From that figure, 262 individuals were analysed by the anthropological laboratory before their bones were sent for DNA testing to the genetics lab. Last week, the media reported of new findings. The remains of 50 Greek Cypriots were uncovered under a pile of rubble in Kyrenia, while there are ongoing digs at Yerasa, Limassol, where the remains of 25 Turkish Cypriots from Tochni, Zygi and Mari have already been found. Also last week, a ceremony was held to mark the remains of 10 Greek soldiers identified by the US NGO Physicians for Human Rights.

For decades, families have been living with a strange marriage of hope and prolonged mourning. Finally, the process has started and some have been able to put their dead to rest. But why did it take so long? And is the CMP an adequate tool for the people of this island to deal with their violent past, bury it and move forward reconciled?

There seems to be a lack of real debate on the issue. The political leadership in both communities has invested much political capital in the missing without concerning itself with establishing the truth behind their stories. Not only would this speed up the process of finding the makeshift burial sites left hidden across the island but it would also help towards reconciliation for a people torn apart by conflict.
At a recent PRIO conference on human rights, Paraschos and Turkish Cypriot journalist and peace activist Sevgul Uludag led a debate on the missing. Both have been actively involved in the missing persons saga for over a decade. In 1995, Paraschos began a campaign to push the government to exhume bodies lying in a Lakatamia graveyard marked as “unknown soldiers and citizens” killed in 1974. The pressure paid off and in 1999, the government began exhumation of the bodies. Paraschos asked: “How can we be giving figures of the missing in international forums when we have 100-odd bodies left unidentified on our own doorstep?”

Uludag published a best-seller on the issue called Oysters with their missing pearls. For the last five years, she has been uncovering untold stories about the missing and mass graves from both sides of the island. Through her newspaper columns, she opened a 'hotline' in the north, encouraging people with information to come forward, even anonymously. Uludag used the information to help locate mass graves and begin the process of exhumations. In 2006, she was awarded the Reporters Without Frontiers-Austria's Press Freedom Award.

Both journalists spoke of the politicisation of the missing persons and the lack of real investigation by the authorities. Every year, we march further and further away from the truth. On Thursday, EU Rapporteur on missing persons in Cyprus Eva Klamt called for a speeding up of the CMP process because eyewitnesses were getting older. There are still people out there who remember what happened and where. Why have they not come out to speak, 30, 40 years on? Why have we not encouraged them? As human rights lawyer Emine Erk noted, is it fair to wait decades before going up to a family member and asking them: “What colour coat was he wearing when you last saw him?”

What are the stories behind the missing? For those that are no longer alive, who killed them? And why? People are still afraid to talk of the dead or of the massacres perpetrated. There is fear that talk will open a Pandora's box of blood, violence and revenge. What happened in the 1960s? What happened in 1974? Apart from the invading army, what crimes did Cypriots commit that have gone unpunished? These questions remain unanswered. Among Greek Cypriots, any talk of illegal killings is hidden behind great acts of heroism, noted Paraschos.

When Politis published a story on massacres perpetrated by both communities in 1974, the response from the public was one of shock. Many people had no idea about the massacres in Aloa, Maratha and Sandalari. For many, it was as if they never happened and reading about them brought a whole new perspective to inter-communal relations. The article was met with silence from the political establishment. Only the head of the Cyprus Church had something to say, calling Politis a Greek-speaking Turkish newspaper. In the north, the authorities' reaction to the pleas from families with missing persons was “consider them dead”. The violent conflicts of the past affected everybody and yet nobody wants to talk about it other than as a channel for political discourse.

“We must understand that we are burying our sins along with our sons. If we cannot admit that we assassinated... if we do not write the real history of the island, we are doomed to failure. We owe it to the land to find out the truth, otherwise we will make the same mistakes,” said Paraschos.

For those that know the truth, they are in a better position to make choices and act on them. During her presentation, Uludag showed a picture of a class of Turkish Cypriot school children. Only one pupil in the photo survived the massacres of 1974. Today, that man is a peace activist. The remains of a Greek Cypriot judge were recently identified and returned to his family. The son invited Turkish Cypriots with missing relatives to lay down wreaths at his father's coffin. Two women with missing parents, one Greek Cypriot and the other Turkish Cypriot, were brought together by Uluda?. They shared their stories of pain, hope and sorrow. Now, they meet every week. When one is sick, the other brings her soup.

Through the work of Uluda?, Paraschos and the CMP, many details of the past have come to light, but none have been published so as not to burden the work of the CMP. The missing are not forgotten.

Grandchildren of the missing take on the plight of their parents. There is much work still to be done. But one question remains unanswered: what do we want? The mandate of the CMP is to establish the fate of the missing, not to establish cause of death or attribute blame. Do we want to know the stories behind the missing? Do we want criminals on both sides to roam free or do we want justice served? Do we want truth, reconciliation and expression of remorse? Or do we just want to bury the past with our dead?

Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2008

[zan]

Which ever way it goes..The ruth is what I want......There must be no room left for speculation and resentment in the future.....The only people that can decide the fate of the people that murdered are those that lost loved ones..They should vote on amnesty or not..Then again I am not sure that I want to put that difficult decision in their path again.

[Bananiot]

Today I attended the funeral service in Larnaca for a man from my village (Gypsos - Acova) called Kkitros who was a neighbour of mine and went to school with his eldest son. He was missing since September 1974 and recently his bones were identified in a mass grave in Tziaos, a Turkish Cypriot village half way between Gypsos and Nicosia. Sevgul Uludag was there too and Kkitos's grandson, who spoke at the funeral, expressed the gratitude of the family to Sevgul for her hard work in pinpointing the mass grave.

The grandson of the diseased, who I learned later is a practicing lawyer, explained to those that attended in a packed church that his grandfather was alive after the Turkish army took over the village. There were many people that were left behind when the Turkish army moved in and these people were initially treated fairly well. Then, the mass graves at Aloa and Sandalaris were found, containing the mutilated bodies of about 100 Turkish Cypriots (mainly women and children) murdered by Greek Cypriots and this enraged the Turkish Cypriots, many of whom called for revenge. While many people were released, Kkitros, along with 6 other people were taken off the car that was taking them to Nicosia and executed in Tziaos.

The family of murdered Kkitros, found the strength to point an accusing finger, not at the Turks in general, in the way nationalist Greek Cypriots do, but at the real enemy of Cyprus as a whole, that is, the racist/chauvinists of both sides, who even today are plotting for the downfall of our country that will most certainly be achieved if their nationalist agendas are not blocked by the healthy thinking people of Cyprus, like the family of Kkitros.

[umit07]

Interesting read Bananiot. I hope the family find peace after finally burying there loved one. Are there families that think, there missing are still alive in secret camps in Turkey? ( asking because I heard something like this ) By the way my grandmother is from Akova.

[zan]

Today I attended the funeral service in Larnaca for a man from my village (Gypsos - Acova) called Kkitros who was a neighbour of mine and went to school with his eldest son. He was missing since September 1974 and recently his bones were identified in a mass grave in Tziaos, a Turkish Cypriot village half way between Gypsos and Nicosia. Sevgul Uludag was there too and Kkitos's grandson, who spoke at the funeral, expressed the gratitude of the family to Sevgul for her hard work in pinpointing the mass grave.

The grandson of the diseased, who I learned later is a practicing lawyer, explained to those that attended in a packed church that his grandfather was alive after the Turkish army took over the village. There were many people that were left behind when the Turkish army moved in and these people were initially treated fairly well. Then, the mass graves at Aloa and Sandalaris were found, containing the mutilated bodies of about 100 Turkish Cypriots (mainly women and children) murdered by Greek Cypriots and this enraged the Turkish Cypriots, many of whom called for revenge. While many people were released, Kkitros, along with 6 other people were taken off the car that was taking them to Nicosia and executed in Tziaos.

The family of murdered Kkitros, found the strength to point an accusing finger, not at the Turks in general, in the way nationalist Greek Cypriots do, but at the real enemy of Cyprus as a whole, that is, the racist/chauvinists of both sides, who even today are plotting for the downfall of our country that will most certainly be achieved if their nationalist agendas are not blocked by the healthy thinking people of Cyprus, like the family of Kkitros.

A sad story on both counts Bananiot..My condolences and best wishes for those families.

[humanist]

Firstly Iceman thank you for the great articles above. Not only they are well written but they also have a very special meaning for me and my family as my mother's brother was one of the missing till about 3 years ago when his remains were found and he had a State burial at our village, my mother and her sister were both there, unfortunately oth his mother and father passed away some years now. My grandmother went to her grave not knowing the fate of her son, but all is well now as they have hopefully re-united agin in the there after.

Grandchildren of the missing take on the plight of their parents. There is much work still to be done. But one question remains unanswered: what do we want? The mandate of the CMP is to establish the fate of the missing, not to establish cause of death or attribute blame. Do we want to know the stories behind the missing? Do we want criminals on both sides to roam free or do we want justice served? Do we want truth, reconciliation and expression of remorse? Or do we just want to bury the past with our dead?

What do we want?

For my family and I we want a United Cyprus where all Cypriots live together in peace and harmony. For us it doesn't matter who did what, that will not bring my uncle back, his life was taken from him at the young age of not even 18 years. But a United Cyprus would make the loss of his life all worth while.

However, this is one (our) family's story and wishes. I would like to see the people responsible for the fate of the Tochni people to justice. That was malicious and with intend. And that is where I believe the RoC can play a role in mending loss of life and relationships between the two communtities, regardless of whether the other side reciprocates or not.

[Nikitas]

I will be very surprised if we get to the point where the remains of all the missing persons are found. In some cases there were mass killings carried out by soldiers on active duty under the eyes of their officers. Some of those officers are now in high, in some cases highest, ranking in the Turkish army.

Some years ago a soldier who took part in the killings got in touch with a Greek embassy employee in Ankara. The soldier wanted to clear his conscience and told of a massacre in an army camp near Lefkoniko. He disappeared soon after the first few meetings. Apparently warned off by MIT people. It is impossible for Turkey to admit that some of its top military men were involved in such incidents.

What will be uncovered will be the odd grave here and there. None of the big ones will be found.

[repulsewarrior]

I am waiting for the return of several of my family. The hardest part for so long was wishing that they were still alive. So many years have passed and still I think of them daily. Now that I am in my fifties, it is hard to believe that some of them are living, some were older than me; yet those my age it is hard to wish them dead. If they live, what kind of life did they pass? Wouldn't it have been better if their death came quickly, even if it was cruel?
This is my pain.

Now I live in fear because with all this time that passed, I have come to realise that it is likely their disappearance was no coincidence, or one of those events that all wars witness. They were murdered, or selected because there exists somewhere a person who did this for their personal gain. We were not rich per se, but the land that belongs to our family is valuable, more valuable than other farmland in our village. I wish for Justice, to end the fear. And it is hard for me when I am in Cyprus to be comfortable knowing that my neighbour whether "Greek" or "Turkish" may be no better than those individuals, who may be living well from a horrible crime, without a conscience. If this psychosis is not rooted out, it will fester. The families who are loved by these people, the denial they live with, what will it spawn?

NO...the fight is not a fight of Cypriot against Cypriot. It is a fight against this madness; of those who justify evil, and who choose to remain ignorant, rather than change themselves, and who hide these things because of the fear which they had a part in.

[BC Numismatics]

This proves that a Nuremburg-style trial needs to be held to judge those who are suspected in participating in acts of human rights abuses against the Cypriot people.Turkey has got a lot to answer for,as does Greece.Those who are guilty of committing murders deserve nothing less than the Saddam Hussein treatment.

Aidan.