Cypriana22
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(8/21/07 2:17 am)
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The agony of not knowing
he agony of not knowing
By Jean Christou
Sometimes in Cyprus it's hard to remember 'the missing' is more than just a catchphrase
IMAGINE, like the British couple whose four-year old daughter Madeleine McCann is missing, how a parent or close relative feels when they don't know the fate of a loved one, especially a child.
Are they cold, hungry, scared, hurt or worse? Will they ever be seen again? If they are dead, how did they die, did they suffer, where are they buried? The torturous questions never really end.
Wind forward 30 years. If, God forbid, little Maddy is never found, she will have become just another statistic, a name on a list of missing children. By then the current world outpouring of sympathy will be long in the past but for the McCanns it will never be over.
Depressing? Yes.
In Cyprus those of us not affected often view the issue of the missing persons as just another extension of the never-ending Cyprus problem, an issue replete with platitudes about heroes, victims and Turkish barbarism.
But underneath the politics what you have are hundreds of grieving fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters, real people with faces and names.
What are the parents of six-year old Eleftherios Eleftheriou, those of five-year old Christakis Georgiou, and the parents of three-year twins Kika and Maria Kyriacou, like the McCann family, thinking and feeling?
A mixture of dread and hope no doubt.
For some of the relatives the nightmare has ended with the identification of the remains of their loved ones. For others it may end in the next few years. For a good number it will not end at all, because the chances of finding the remains of all 1,534 still listed is slim, according to Nicos Theodosiou the head of the Committee for the Relatives and Friends of Missing Persons.
"There will be a number - we hope it won't be that big - that will be hard to identify. In some cases it will be impossible and I refer to cases where the remains were burned from napalm or fires after the bombings. There are cases of people who were blown up and cases of people killed and buried by unknown people that were never reported. Even a Greek Cypriot might have buried a soldier and not said anything because he maybe doesn't know the person is on the list of the missing or maybe he is dead himself so there are several cases where I don't think we will have a happy end for the matter of finding the remains," he said.
"But it's very important not to stop at the excavations. The Committee for Missing Persons (CMP) should continue investigating. We believe the Turkish army and the Turkish prisons have a lot of information if released, it will assist in finding more details and maybe more remains and for the hope of the families, maybe some people are still in prison and may be released because the families believe that, they are entitled to believe that and on one can take that hope away from them."
Describing the process that has been under way for some months of informing the families of those who have been identified through the joint exhumation process and DNA testing, Theodosiou said people's feelings were mixed.
"They [Committee representatives] just don't appear on their doorstep. They give them a call and we have already indicated the contact person from each family. Usually it's the psychologically stronger person so in the case of the parents of a missing son, we might inform the brother and if there is no sibling, maybe a nephew. We don't go directly to the parents," he said, adding that this is left to the contact person.
After that a meeting is arranged either at the CMP or at the family home.
The team has a psychologist and a doctor on hand and if anyone has heart problems, an ambulance will also be on hand.
"Once the family knows officially for a few minutes there is a big shock because even though they have the information because there was always that little bit of hope, and that's only human.
"Sometimes they hope it's a mistake and that maybe it's not him, but once you have the official answer from the CMP then you know it's a fact. That's the shock of losing the last bit of hope you have," said Theodosiou, whose own missing brother is not so far among those identified.
"A few minutes later, some positive feelings begin to come to the surface, which is realising and understanding that a long and painful situation is over and you have results and the remains and you know what the end of the story was for that person was and then you know you can perform the religious rites.
"It has helped. I met a friend whose father was identified. A couple of days after the funeral and he said to me with a smiling face, I just came from my dad's grave. For him that was so important to do and to be able to say. It's the same for the Turkish Cypriot families. The pain is common for all of them."
Some 500 Turkish Cypriots are listed as missing, 300 from the intercommunal troubles of the sixties and 200 from 1974.
Theodosiou said the need to know how exactly a loved one has died and as much as possible about their last moments was a human need. After being officially informed, families are invited to the anthropological laboratory in the buffer zone where they are given the details, are allowed to see the remains if they wish, and take any personal items found on the body.
"There they get a lot of details as to how they died. If they were shot in the head it was shown. If they had been physically abused before death they can tell from the broken bones. They want to know.
"It's the same way as if someone knocked on your door early in the morning and they say your son or whatever had a bad accident. Immediately the human response is to find out how. Was it is his fault? Was he drunk was he wearing a helmet, did he pass a red light? All these details are needed to complete the picture of the loss."
Incidentally, in the majority of the 15 cases identified and handed over a month ago, and the 23 ongoing cases, each death was caused by a bullet to the head.
"They were all executed. The first cases were people from Yialousa, none of them were soldiers. They were arrested after the ceasefire and they were just shot. It could have been for revenge. It was Turkish Cypriots that carried out the arrests in Yialousa," said Theodosiou.
He said the second group were national guardsmen but they did not die in the battlefield. They also were executed.
"Our hope for the missing children being alive is greater," said Theodosiou. "There is contradicting information in all cases and none of the excavations so far have been children."
There are 27 children under 16 on the missing list, including babies a few months old.
"We are going through a very difficult phase. This situation damages the souls of the relatives and every time we hear of a missing person being identified, we identify with that situation and it's going to take a long time and it's going to be very hard so we are just asking the relatives to stay strong and have dignity until this whole procedure is over," Theodosiou said
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