Cyprus-Forum.com

[brother]

Missing persons


? I didn’t expect the Turks to be like ruminants and chew the cud but I am afraid this is exactly what is happening with one of my stories. In 1981, I was commissioned by an American newspaper to write a report about the most tragic issue of the 1974 coup and invasion by the Greeks and Turks.
The President of the Committee of Missing Person, a priest who had his personal tragedy, sounded convincing in telling me the story of Androulla Palma from Peristerona. I was introduced to her and interviewed her. It was difficult to hide my emotions but what I later discovered, in May 1998, shocked me and I wrote a another article headlined:  "Playing with Human Pain".
In fact, the priest who told me the story of Androulla had known all along that her husband was killed and buried in 1974 and she was fooled into believing that he was alive and captive in Turkey.
She was used for years for propaganda purposes. I wrote that she was fooled, I was fooled and many other journalists were fooled and we fooled our readers. I apologised profoundly and stressed that I, like the other journalists, acted  bona fide. What else could a journalist who believes in honesty  have done other than what I did?
Ankara took my piece, changed it in a way to facilitate their purposes, gave different versions to Nicosia and their missions in New York, Geneva and elsewhere and, with the help of the Internet, they tried to put words into my pen and prove that the Greek Cypriot side has only a small number of missing persons.
Well, we know that is not so. We know that the Greek Cypriot missing persons are not the original 1,619, but they are close to sixteen hundred.
The headline last week on one the nine websites is "The Confession of George Lanitis".
I only have one confession to make. I can claim responsibility for obtaining the film material from close friends showing prisoners of war in Adana prison. This material was used widely by Stella Soulioti when she, assisted by colleagues, identified a great number of Greek Cypriots who did not return and who are still missing.
I am not ashamed of what I did.
I am not ashamed for apologising after I knew that the priest was torturing Androulla Palma, because torture it was. On one of the websites I am described as a prominent Greek Cypriot journalist.
I wish to remain so and I find it frivolous that, after all these years, last week, the subject that I wrote about has turned into the subject of a chat game on the Internet.
If it helps lead us to serious discussion, then I am happy. But if it is to ridicule a tragedy, then I am more than concerned and Greek and Turkish Cypriots should be concerned that so many years after those tragic events they have not been able to solve this purely humanitarian problem, where honesty does not cost but pays dividends.
I don’t know how free Mehmet Ali Talat is from Ankara for taking initiatives but he must put his cards on the table, allow the international committee to meet without flimsy demands and excuses and solve a human tragedy which hurts both sides because there are not only Greek Cypriot missing, there are Turkish Cypriots too and their relatives want to know of their fate.


A DECENT MAN BUT SHAME ON THE GOVERMENTS FOR USING HIM AND STILL TAKING ADVANTAGE OF OUR HUMAN TRAGEDY.

[turkkan]

brother, you are george lanitis from cyprus weekly? Or is this just a copy paste from another article?

[brother]

This is a copy and paste with my own comment at the bottom, what do you think about what he has to say.

[MicAtCyp]

Brother
I was always thinking that the matter of missing persons had some meaning if there were indeed persons alive.There were various rumours after 1974 that there were alive persons in Turkish prisons. I have no doubt there were some. You know why? Because the Turkish side kept them as reserves so as to be sure all their own captives were returned.
Unfortunately until that happened our idiots made such a big fuss about the persons that were seen alive in Turkish prisons -but never returned- that the Turkish side had no other option than to stick to their original lie that there weren’t any. The more the Turkish side was insisting the more our side was using the issue of missing persons for propaganda. So in the end Turkey "vanished" those few innoncent people who were indeed alive.

Later on the matter of the missing persons became totally meaningless just trying to find where dead people are burried. And as Lanitis said there was always a propaganda issue involved. Yet there are people whose soul will never rest until they learn where their beloved ones are burried, and get their bones and burry them somewhere decently. There are other people who cannot-simply cannot- beleive their beloved ones are dead, until they receive absolute proof. And their hearts tear appart every day.

You know there is a woman who left her infant twin daughters for just half an hour and she never saw them again.That woman beleives it is impossible that her babies were killed.She beleives they were taken by another woman (propably TC) and every time I see her on TV her eyes are red from crying everyday for 30 years now. She once said that her telephone rung and a young female voice said to her in broken Greek "I am your daughter" and then she heard Turkish voices shouting on the phone and the line was dropped. Who knows...

[brother]

I always had the same impression about the missing but like you over the years i started to believe that there being alive was a remote chance.

I just find it very upseting as not just in my family but many friends of the family have many missing and they all need closure.

The story of the lady with the missing children made me cry(i am a very emotional person) and i can only hope that God will eventually reunite her with the babies she lost but that is why i call it a human tragedy that we the cypriots should be ashamed of and at the same time put our every effort to right the wrongs of the past.

All i can do is apologise for the suffering of my GC brothers and sisters and i personally will always inform any kind of development to all concerned in any means i can, i know of TC famalies who have suffered the same dilema hence my final thought is "your pain is my pain and my pain is yours" so lets heal it togethar.

[Bananiot]

Well said brother. We need to apologise to each other for all the sufferings we have caused and try to move on. Of course this can happen only after the fate of each and everyone of the missing persons, G and TC's is verified.

[erolz]

Well said brother. We need to apologise to each other for all the sufferings we have caused and try to move on.

As far as I personaly have caused any suffering to any GC (or any person for that matter) I appologise unreservedly. As far as I have any right to appologise for any suffering caused by the TC community to GC (or any person for that matter) I appologise unreservedly.

[magikthrill]

on a somewhat related topic lately i got thinking something regarding the entire CYprus problem. Before I learned more about the issue I always thought that the only reason why my mother and her family were forced leave their homes and one of her relatives was/is a missing person was solely Turkey's fault.

Lately however I started comparing this to the US 9/11 attacks. Who was to blame for that? Obviously it was the terrorists who performed these actions. But were they the only ones to blame? No, the US's foreign policy was also to blame, not only the terrorists.

Likewise, I am not starting to realize that although obviously it is Turkey's fault for the misfortunes caused upon my mother's side of the family, I feel all the GCs who loathfully ruined, destroyed and ended the lives of TCs are also at fault here.

Now why should I apologize? I do not know. But what I do know is I defnitely feel terrible that so much harm has been invoked on such a small and beautiful island.

[brother]

This you see makes it all worth while to see that people on this forum can come down to earth and see we are all human beings, if this maturity and goodwill over time can be acomplished all over our island i would not fear anything in life i would know that i have the whole of cyprus behind me.

[Bananiot]

I appreciate it erolz, but of course we need this to materialise on a community level. For example, Papadopoulos (warlord in 1963) and Denktas (TMT spititual and material father), to appear on tv and say sorry to each other, hug and promise to put everything behind them and strive for a new era of friendship, cooperation and understanding. If they shed some tears, so much the better, as long as they take their glasses off so that everyone can see their wet eyes.