Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers

Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Contents Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

p. 2

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 1. Locating the case studies (Spain, former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Morocco, Cyprus) Material for Unit 1 - Activity 1. The current situation (Spain, former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Morocco) Material for Unit 1 - Activity 2. The context (Spain, former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Morocco) Material for Unit 1 - Activity 3. Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons (Spain, former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Morocco)

p. 2 p. 3 p. 7 p. 11

Unit 2: The missing persons of Cyprus

p. 18

Material for Unit 2 - Starter Activity. Current situation of missing persons in Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Activity 1. People who went missing in Cyprus due to conflict: articles from Turkish and Greek language newspapers

p. 18 p. 19

Material for Unit 2 - Activity 2. Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons in Cyprus

p. 38

Unit 3: Why have different responses to Cyprus’ missing persons problem emerged over time?

p. 46

Materials for Unit 3 - Activity 2. Timeline of major events; video-clips and written sources for each group Materials for Unit 3 - Activity 3. Graph to map the emergence and fluctuation in importance of aims, beliefs and motivations of each group over time

p. 46

Unit 4: History and memory

p. 61

Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(a). Approaching the past in different ways: monuments and monumentality Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(b). Monuments to the missing: how have missing people been represented and memorialised in monuments?

p. 61

1_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

p. 60

p. 66

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1-Activity 1 Locating the case studies (Spain, former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Morocco, Cyprus)

Cyprus

Spain Guatemala

Morocco former Yugoslavia

2_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 1 The current situation The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 1: Spain In Spain, around 114,266 people were buried in common graves all over the country and their remains went missing. Recent historical research estimates the number of people executed by Franco’s troops during and after the war as being between 70,000 and 100,000.

For many years, very little was done to investigate the disappeared. A strong social movement emerged in the 2000s that aimed at the ‘recovery of historical memories’, locating graves and exhuming remains of the victims. One leading organisation has been the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) which petitioned for exhumations and started an independent exhumations process with the aid of private financing.

In 2007, Spain's parliament approved a Law of Historical Memory, which obliged the government to provide support for the exhumation of the remains of those executed by Franco’s supporters, still buried in unmarked graves throughout the country.

In 2008, investigations into the execution and disappearance of 114,266 people killed between July 1936 and December 1951 were initiated by a Spanish judge, Baltazar Garzón, after receiving cases from the association of families. This process was quickly overturned by a ruling by the National Criminal Court to refer the cases to local criminal courts in whose jurisdiction the mass graves had been found. Many of these courts automatically closed the cases, citing that the statute of limitiations had elapsed. In 2010, Garzón was charged with exceeding his jurisdiction, and faces being removed from the bench.

It is estimated that there are 2,052 burial sites across Spain, of which less than 10 percent have been investigated. Town councils, especially those with more right-wing orientations, have sometimes tried to prevent the exhumations. Despite the lack of progress at the official level, there is an emerging debate in the media about the importance of finding the graves of the missing, and families play an important role in continuing pressure to open burial sites, exhume and identify bodies. Recently, the government has mapped gravesites, and approved a protocol for exhumations.

3_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 1 The current situation The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 2: The former Yugoslavia Throughout the 1990s, the states that were part of the former Yugoslavia became battlegrounds that witnessed the worst violence in Europe since the Second World War. The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia included widespread attacks against civilians, population expulsions, systematic rape and the use of concentration camps. The conflicts were characterised by extensive war crimes and crimes against humanity. They were driven by breakaway struggles that grew into bitter and bloody ethnic conflict between and within the region's groups.

There are a total of 34,809 people reported missing as a result of the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegov, and Kosovo. More than a decade later, approximately 13,714 of those people are still missing. It has been calculated that the lives of 200,000 people have been directly affected by the disappearances. A large number of people missing were buried in mass graves. In the region, of the 22,456 people reported as disappeared during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995, 12,908 remain unaccounted for. 1,811 of the 6,016 people reported for Kosovo have not yet been found. From the conflicts in Croatia between 1991 and 1995, some 2,355 of 6,337 reported are still missing. The missing include Croats, Serbs, Bosniacs, Albanians, Montenegrins, Hungarians, and Roma.

Exhumations have been slow-going, and progress in the region is not uniform due to reasons of both political will and logistics. The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as well as families' and survivors' groups have been at the forefront of efforts to find the missing. Pressure, as well as financial and structural support by the international community has aided the excavation of burial sites and the identification and return of remains.

4_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 1 The current situation The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 3: Guatemala Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict was one of the most savage in the Western hemisphere. Repression by the military regime targetted the guerilla forces of the Revolutionary National Unity of Guatemala (URNG), along with community leaders, civilians, women, and children. The conflict ended with a peace agreement signed in 1996.

The UN-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification in its 1999 report registered 42,275 victims, of which more than 6,000 were victims of forced disappearance. The overwhelming majority of the victims (83 percent of those who were fully identified) were indigenous Mayans, though people from all social and economic stratas of society were victims. It is estimated that up to 50,000 people were disappeared in total.

In the early 1990s, civil society organisations invited an international team of forensic anthropologists, made up of members of the Argentine and Chilean Forensic Anthropological Teams, who conducted the first exhumations and who also trained local anthropologists and students who later formed the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropological Team (FAFG). The FAFG was established, and began its work to find the disappeared in 1994.

The FAFG is currently focusing on 'the historical reconstruction of forced disappearances in Guatemala and the creation of a methodology for the search for people who went missing during the armed conflict.’ As of 2011, 5,656 sets of remains have been recovered.

The needs of families have yet to be fully addressed in Guatemala. The national reparations scheme initiated by the government in 2003 for victims of the conflict provides only financial compensation, is slow and insufficient, and does not address the needs of families to know what happened to their loved ones. There is no national tracing mechanism for families of disappeared people. The ICRC has reported that 'only half of all rural families from which a person disappeared have undertaken any investigations. In most cases, this is because they are afraid, are isolated or do not know about the organisations they could call on, or else are too poor to travel, carry out the formalities required or undertake a search.' As a result, the fate of many of the disappeared continues to be unknown.

5_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 1 The current situation The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 4: Morocco King Hassan II ruled Morocco from 1961 to 1999. His administration, fearful of Arab socialism, carried out waves of repression against anyone seen as posing a threat to the monarchy. It is estimated that approximately 50,000 people were victims of violations that ranged from arbitrary detention and torture to extrajudicial execution and forced disappearances. The number of disappeared is estimated at between 1,000 and 2,000 people.

King Mohammed VI, who succeeded King Hasan II in 1999, created the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER) in 2004 to carry out investigations into human rights violations, including claims about enforced disappearence.

The government’s record on clarifying the fate of the disappeared remains mixed. The Moroccan authorities have not yet fully complied with their obligation to grant victims 'the rights to truth, justice, and adequate reparation.' A number of disappearance cases remain unresolved. Some relatives of disappeared persons have had no access to their loved ones' remains, and information about the conditions surrounding their capture and death is not uniformly or consistently provided. Significant complaints involved the limited information the Commission released about the fate of the disappeared and the burial sites of the deceased. Another important criticism brought to the Commission was its limited investigative powers and lack of authority to hold perpetrators of human rights abuses to account. It is also important to note that the practice of disappearance continues in Morocco, though it is not as widespread.

6_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 2 The context The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 1: Spain Spain went through a bloody civil war from 1936 to 1939, sparked by a military rebellion led by General Francisco Franco against Spain's democratically elected government of the II Republic. By the end of the regime in 1975, more than half a million Spaniards had been killed. Franco's military dictatorship lasted until his death in 1975, which led to a transition to democracy.

Many of those killed in the Spanish Civil War were executed away from the battlefields and left buried in unmarked graves. Recent historical research estimates the number of people executed by Franco’s troops during and after the war as being between 70,000 and 100,000. Between 1939 and 1947, more than 400,000 Spaniards were kept in concentration camps. Over the next three decades, political executions and persecution were rife. Half a million people fled the country. Among those who were killed during the war, around 114,266 were buried in common graves all over the country and their remains went missing.

In 1977, two years after Franco's death and as part of a long negotiated process of transition to democracy, between the Francoist elite and the democratic opposition, Spain's first democratically elected parliament passed an amnesty law. The law, envisioned to free the remaining political prisoners of the regime, also guaranteed amnesty for the crimes committed by Francoism. This meant that no one would be called to account judicially. At that moment, there was a strong fear in Spain that opening old wounds would trigger another civil war or a military coup. This fear drove the compromise accepted by democratic reformers, who feared the army and the considerable residual military strength of the civilian extreme right to leave the past behind.

The breakthrough in terms of coming to terms with the past came in the 2000s. This was the period when Spain saw the emergence, simultaneously, of a number of different factors which made debate about the civil war legacy more possible. Among those factors was the appearance of a victims' families movement that aimed at the ‘recovery of historical memories’. The recovery process essentially aimed at locating graves and exhuming remains of the victims of the civil war. This was an initiative started by local organisations that sprung up in different regions of the county.

Although the government passed the Law of Historical Memory in 2007, which condemned Franco’s regime and provided for a number of measures to address the abuses of the past, this law has since been put into question by other rulings. Families and civil society groups continue to put pressure on the government and they also carry out their own exhumations. The Spanish government remains ambivalent in its commitment, progress continues to be slow, often right-wing town councils, in towns in which burial sites exist oppose excavations, and urban development means that possible sites are being built over. Recently, however, the government has mapped gravesites, and approved a protocol for exhumations.

7_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 2 The context The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 2: The former Yugoslavia Throughout the 1990s, the states that were part of the former Yugoslavia became battlegrounds that witnessed the worst violence in Europe since the Second World War. The conflict itself did not begin with the end of the Cold War, but had its roots in earlier tensions. The Second World War was marked by prolonged armed conflict and repression. The memory of tensions from this time was easily rekindled as Yugoslavia began to break down in the 1990s.

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was made up of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia as well as the two separate regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina, which were autonomous provinces within the Republic of Serbia. Yugoslavia had a number of religions and ethnic groups, and these ethnic groups were also mixed within each of the states, though Bosnia and Herzegovina was the most unique in that it did not possess a single ethnic majority.

The region experienced serious political and economic crisis during the collapse of communism, and this was deepened by political actors who used militant nationalism to fuel mistrust and tension between the ethnic and religious groups.

Slovenia's declaration of independence in 1991 marked the start of the bloody unravelling of Yugoslavia. Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) followed suit in 1991 and 1992 through wars that lasted until 1995. In Croatia, the violence was primarily between the majority Croats and the large ethnic Serb minority and involved, among other factors, battles about territorial separation. Bosnia was made up of approximately 43 percent Bosnian Muslims, 33 percent Bosnian Serbs, 17 percent Bosnian Croats and approximately 7 percent of other nationalities. The broader ethnic tensions were therefore reflected internally.

Regional tensions were also reflected, as Serbia and Croatia struggled to hold power in the state. Fighting in Kosovo lasted from 1998 to 1999, and Kosovo was the site of violence between the ethnic Albanian community that sought refuge from Serbia, and Serb forces who used violence to force Kosovar Albanians to flee their homes en masse. Between March and June in 1999, NATO launched air strikes against Serb forces in Kosovo and Serbia, which led to the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from Kosovo and the eventual end of the wars.

The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia included widespread attacks against civilians, population expulsions, systematic rape and the use of concentration camps. The conflicts were characterised by extensive war crimes and crimes against humanity. They were driven by breakaway struggles that grew into bitter and bloody ethnic conflict between and within the region's groups.

The conflict effectively ended in December 1995, with the signing of the Dayton Agreement by the presidents of Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia.

Though the agreement focused on ending the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was also designed to provide the basis for regional balance of power between the conflict states in the former Yugoslavia, both re-modelling the system of government in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and redistributing territory between the conflict parties.

8_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 2 The context The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 3: Guatemala Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict was one of the lengthiest and most savage in the Western hemisphere. The military regime targetted the guerilla forces of the Revolutionary National Unity of Guatemala (URNG), along with community leaders, civilians, women, and children. The overwhelming majority of the victims (83 percent of those who were fully identified) were indigenous Mayans, though people from all social and economic stratas of society were victims. The conflict ended with a peace agreement signed in 1996.

Underlying the Guatemalan civil war was a deeper conflict over unequal access to land and resources. Between 1945 and 1954, a series of agrarian and labour reforms were implemented, focusing on strengthening workers' rights and redistributing land to more than 100,000 peasants. Tensions over this policy led to a US-backed coup in 1954, creating a military regime which used its power to violently repress dissent and overturn the reforms.

Guerilla groups that started operating in the 1960s merged in 1982 to form the Revolutionary National Unity of Guatemala (URNG). The military intensified its efforts to squash the resistance and declared victory over the insurgents in 1983. It attempted a transition to civilian rule in 1984.

After a lengthy peace process, a UN-brokered peace agreement was signed in 1996 between the government and the URNG. Today, Guatemala is recognised as one of the world's most violent countries, where hundreds of human rights activists are attacked each year, and '[m]any Guatemalans whose family members were killed by the death squads still live in fear themselves.' This is partly due to the 'continued existence of illegal and clandestine security organisations, which are responsible for a large number of threats and attacks against human rights defenders. These organised crime-like groups allegedly have extensive links with many public institutions in Guatemala. They were supposed to have been dismantled following the Peace Accords, yet they continue to operate.' These organisations operate in a climate of almost complete impunity. Moreover, recognition of the scale, and deep damage caused by the civil war is not country-wide. The elite, generally of Spanish ancestry, have largely denied the causes and consequences of the violence of the past. People who are considered to be the main architects of the atrocities and lower-level perpetrators of the crimes are only recently beginning to be prosecuted in Spanish, Guatemalan, and international courts. Sebastian Elgueta from Amnesty International has argued that a number of former government officials who contributed to the murders continue to hold powerful positions in the private sector.

9_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 2 The context The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 4: Morocco Morocco’s gaining of independence from France in 1956 started a dark phase in Moroccan history, defined by systematic human rights violations.

For many years Moroccan authorities arbitrarily detained, tortured or ‘disappeared’ thousands of citizens.

In 1961, King Hassan II succeeded to the throne and ruled the country for 38 years. King Hassan II’s administration, fearful of Arab socialism, carried out waves of repression against anyone seen as posing a threat to the monarchy.

The authorities targeted intellectuals, trade unionists and members of the left-wing National Union of Popular Forces, as well as farmers and anyone seen to be opposed to the monarchy during the 1960s. Furthermore, the two unsuccessful military coup attempts carried out in the early 1970s led to greater repression, particularly towards Marxists and Islamists. Dissidents were arrested and taken to secret detention centres where they were ‘disappeared’. Some military officers accused of taking part in the coups were executed after summary trials, whereas others were sent to the detention centres, and kept there for many years.

Although Morocco started enacting important reforms in the 1990s which culminated in the establishment of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission in 2004, the government has yet to fully implement the recommedations for legal and institutional reform proposed by the Commission.

The Moroccan authorities have not yet fully complied with their obligation to grant victims 'the rights to truth, justice, and adequate reparation.'

Furthermore, communal reparations programs are still in the implementation phase. It is also important to note that the practice of disappearance continues in Morocco, though it is not as widespread.

10_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 3 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 1: Spain In Spain, around 114,266 people were buried in common graves all over the country and their remains went missing.

For many years, very little was done to investigate the disappeared and a pact of silence dominated Spanish society. Over the course of the 1980s, there were fractured efforts to deal with the past from different sectors. A limited reparations law was passed, however, it did not recognise victims, which led to complaints among those affected by the war. During this period Spain also witnessed the explosion of detailed empirical works of history that minutely reconstructed Francoist repression on a province-by-province basis.

The 1998 arrest of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet in London was one of the factors which contributed to increasing debate about the civil war past in Spain. Pinochet's arrest was ordered by Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón, who asserted competence on the basis of universal jurisdiction.

In the 2000s, debate about the civil war legacy became more possible. One notable organisation has been the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) which petitioned for exhumation from common graves of the remains of those extra-judicially murdered so they may be identified and reburied by family and friends. The ARMH was founded in 2000 by Emilio Silva who was in search for his own grandfather, killed in October 1936 by Francoist vigilantes. Silva’s grandfather’s roadside grave which also contained the remains of another thirteen victims, became the ARMH's flagship case and was taken to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. By 2006, the ARMH had exhumed some 40 gravesites containing 520 bodies. ARMH’s work has depended on volunteers and on the financial contributions of the families of the missing. Although local authorities have sometimes offered aid, during the early period of exhumations, there were no central government funds for the work.

In November 2002, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances urged the Spanish government to undertake investigations and exhumations of known graves of the remains of the disappeared. While the Working Group recommended the Spanish government investigate only two cases, it increased the pressure on the government to deal with this issue.

Critical to the public debate domestically was the combination of pressure from victims associations such as AMRH and political parties from the left (Izquierda Unida and Catalanish), who played a significant role in awakening Spanish society’s consciousness.

In 2007, Spain's parliament approved a Law of Historical Memory. The law included a condemnation of Franco's regime, created a council to investigate human rights abuses, enabled reparations to victims, obliged the government to provide support for the exhumations of graves, and required the removal of public memorials that exalts one of the warring parties and the Franco regime.

In 2008, Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón began investigations into the execution and disappearance of 114,266 people killed between 17 July 1936 and December 1951. Soon after Garzón's decision, a ruling by the National Criminal Court led to all the suspected cases of enforced disappearence being referred to local criminal courts in whose jurisdiction the mass graves had been found. Many of these courts automatically closed the cases, citing that the statute of limitiations had elapsed. In 2010, Garzón was charged with exceeding his jurisdiction, and faces being removed from the bench.

11_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

The Spanish government remains ambivalent in its commitment, progress continues to be slow, often right-wing town councils in towns in which burial sites exist oppose excavations, and urban development means that possible sites are being built over. Recently, however, the government has mapped gravesites, and approved a protocol for exhumations The legacy of the civil war has only begun to be dealt with in Spain, and there is a great deal of tension across all sectors of society regarding how the past should be addressed. This is especially evident in the treatment of the missing. There is an emerging, but cautious, debate in the media about the importance of finding the graves of the missing. At the same time, the political division across left and right remains pervasive, and families of missing people still sometimes request anonymity in the process of seeking remains. However, families continue to play an important role in continuing pressure to open burial sites and exhume and identify bodies. There is also an increasing engagement among civil society actors and the arts and academic communities in the discussion about the past and in rethinking the way the civil war is understood.

12_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 3 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 2: The former Yugoslavia There are a total of 34,809 people reported missing as a result of the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. More than a decade later, approximately 13,714 of those people are still missing. The missing include Croats, Serbs, Bosniacs, Albanians, Montenegrins, Hungarians, and Roma. The scale and range of atrocities committed during the war were extensive. There have been some attempts to carry out prosecutions for war crimes, but there has been little coordinated effort to learn the fate of the missing in the region.

The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as well as families' and survivors' groups have been at the forefront of efforts to find the missing.

The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) was established in 1996 to support the Dayton Peace Agreement in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Since the end of 2001, the ICMP has used DNA to identify 'large numbers of persons missing from armed conflict.' The organisation 'developed a database of 88,610 relatives of 29,073 missing people, and more than 33,000 bone samples taken from mortal remains exhumed from clandestine graves in the countries of former Yugoslavia. By matching DNA from blood and bone samples, ICMP has been able to identify 15,955 people who were missing from the conflicts and whose mortal remains were found in hidden graves.'

The ICRC 'supports efforts to determine the fate of people missing in relation to conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and to ensure that their families’ legal, psychological and economic needs are met. This includes assisting the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo with amendments to existing legislation and the drafting of new laws to protect the rights of missing persons' families'. The ICRC also chairs the Working Group on Missing Persons, through which dialogue is conducted between the Kosovar and Serbian authorities. The ICRC has worked to gather information which has been held in the archives of military contingents in Kosovo and of international organisations. This has led to exchanges of information between the conflict parties, as well as exhumations and the return of remains to family members in both Serbia and Kosovo. In Sarajevo, the ICRC has helped build the capacity of the BiH Missing Persons Institute, and in Pristina it supports the Government Commission on Missing Persons in Kosovo. The ICRC trains National Society staff in each of the countries to provide psychological support to families of the missing, and works with local Red Cross organisations on the issue of the missing.

The Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina (MPI) was co-founded by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Council of Ministers and the ICMP in 2005, and began operating in 2008. It centralises all information on the missing and on mass graves, notifies families and issues certificates of disappearance, informs local judicial authorities about the locations of possible grave sites and requests investigation, participates in excavation and exhumations, autopsies and identifications, and provides support to the families of the missing. An important task has been to establish a unified record of people who went missing in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is critical because, as has happened in other conflicts, in the absence of a centralised record of the missing and disappeared, a number or organisations keep their own records, which leads to confusion over numbers and information.

The MPI grew out of a 1997 initiative by the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in 1997 called the ‘Joint Exhumation Process’. This allowed the conflict parties to exhume their own missing persons in the territory of the other side. Together with the MPI, a group of families of the missing lobbied to have a Law on Missing Persons created. This law entered into force in November 2004, but has not yet been fully implemented. The law 'establishes the principles for improving the tracing process, the definition of a missing person, the method of managing the central records,

13_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

realisation of social and other rights of family members of missing persons, and other issues related to tracing missing persons from/in Bosnia and Herzegovina'.

The governments of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo each collaborated with the ICRC to produce a 'Book of Missing Persons' for their country, which lists the names of people still unaccounted for as a result of the conflict.

None of the governments involved have made a comprehensive effort to investigate the causes of the war crimes or document the crimes committed.

Initiatives to launch truth-seeking measures have either failed to produce a commission (BiH, 1990s, 2005-2006) or have established commissions that failed to deliver a final report with findings and recommendations (Serbia and Montenegro, 2001). Throughout the former Yugoslavia, authorities have provided material reparations primarily to members of the dominant ethnic group in the area. Similarly, memorials usually pay tribute only to victims of the majority group. Reparation laws also are significantly more favourable to former combatants than to civilian victims.

At the regional level, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), established in 1993 by the United Nations Security Council, has indicted 161 people, many of them high-ranking political or military leaders including the former Prime Minister of Kosovo, the former President of Serbia, and the former commanders of the Bosnian Serb and Croatian armies. The ICTY has also ruled on cases of genocide, which involves people who remain missing.

Since 2006, civil society organisations from the post-Yugoslav countries have actively discussed the need for establishing a regional truth-telling mechanism. The Coalition for RECOM (regional truth commission) approached the governments in the region in the first half of 2011 with a request to establish a regional truth commission to establish the fate of the missing. The Coalition is made up of 1,500 regional NGO and human rights groups.

Civil society has been heavily involved in pushing for progress on the issue of the missing, and a great deal of controversy exists over unresolved questions, including the exact number of missing people in the region. The numbers of missing in each country have been subject to political manipulation. In an effort to address this gap RECOM has gathered half a million signatures in a regional petition to establish the commission.

There are a number of civil society organisations that represent survivors and victims of Srebrenica. Women of Srebrenica is a non-governmental organisation whose ‘task is to search for more than 10,000 people missing in Europe’s largest massacre, committed by the Bosnian Serb army, on July 11, 1995, in Srebrenica’. There have been significant documentation efforts by NGOs and legal institutes, as well as memorials to the missing built by survivors' groups, civil society, and governments. For example, the Humanitarian Law Center, a non-governmental organisation, has accumulated information about all those who were killed or disappeared in the Kosovo war (about 12,000 people). During the process of documenting all individual cases they conducted interviews with hundreds of family members of the missing. They also collected newspaper articles and testimonies from family members.

The prosecution of war crimes and crimes which led to people's disappearance over the course of the conflict has been under-represented in the regional media, or else dealt with selectively within each country so that the media reinforces already-established victim-perpetrator narratives that emphasise separate narratives and that present the community concerned as innocent.

14_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 3 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 3: Guatemala The armed conflict between the military regime and insurgency forces in Guatemala led to an estimated 200,000 people being killed or disappeared during the conflict. Of the 42,275 victims registered by the Historical Clarification Commission, more than 6,000 were victims of forced disappearance. Other figures estimate that up to 50,000 people were disappeared in total.

In the early 1990s, before the signing of the peace agreement, a broad group of civil society organisations and relatives of disappeared persons came together to lobby the Public Ministry about the existence of secret cemeteries in their communities. These organisations collected information about clandestine cemeteries, enforced disappearances, and political executions, in order to discover the locations of their loved ones' remains.

They invited an international team of forensic anthropologists made up of members of the Argentine and Chilean Forensic Anthropological Teams, who conducted the first exhumations and who also trained local anthropologists and students who later formed the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropological Team (EAFG). The FAFG was established, and began its work in 1994. The FAFG is currently focusing on 'the historical reconstruction of forced disappearances in Guatemala and the creation of a methodology for the search for people who went missing during the armed conflict.’

As of 2011, 5,656 sets of remains had been recovered.

Exhumations in Guatemala, in contrast to other contexts, were an inclusive process that extended beyond the return of remains. Children, neighbours, friends, and community members were involved and helping, cooking meals, digging for remains, providing psychological support to family members. Exhumations in Guatemalan society have helped to create a broader process of healing among victims and communities.

There has also been a focus on psycho-social reparations in Guatemalan society.

An unofficial truth-seeking process sponsored by the Catholic Church, called the Recovery of Historical Memory project (REMHI), issued a report in April 1998 that analysed some 7,000 interviews with victims and attributed responsibility for more than 90 percent of the atrocities documented to the army. Two days after the report was published, REMHI's leader, Bishop Juan Gerardi, was murdered. While this case eventually resulted in a few convictions, legal proceedings continue to this day.

The 1996 Guatemalan peace accords also included the creation of a Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) that – operating with a mixed Guatemalan and international staff led by the UN – collected testimonies throughout the country. Its mandate was to clarify the human rights violations and acts of violence related to the conflict, report on the findings of its investigations, and to propose measures to encourage peace and national harmony in Guatemala, ‘especially measures to preserve the memory of the victims, to foster a culture of mutual respect and observance of human rights and to strengthen the democratic process.

Its 1999 report concluded that acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and other violations of human rights and humanitarian law had occurred.

The Commission recommended that those responsible for abuses should be brought to justice by the Guatemalan authorities and that a reparations policy should be promoted to dignify victims. The report was strongly contested by the government of the time and as a result, many of the report's recommendations languished along with prosecutions for serious human rights abuses.

Ongoing pressure from civil society and victims' groups for greater justice has led to prosecutions, although these have been limited. Pressure from civil society and victims' groups led the government to create a National Reparations Program in 2003. On 25 February 2009, President Alvaro

15_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Colom accepted the CEH report in Guatemala City's Plaza of the Constitution on the 'Day of Dignity for the Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict'.

In accepting the report, he asked for a pardon.

The fate of many of the disappeared continues to be unknown. Many cases are still under investigation or pending prosecution in national courts, and victims’ organisations have continued to press for justice. What kept investigations going despite grave risks was the will and effort of local victims, supported at key moments by honest prosecutors. Attempts at restitution have been slow and insufficient. Recognition of the scale and deep damage caused by the civil war is not country-wide. The elite, generally of Spanish ancestry, have largely ignored the violence of the past.

In the absence of widespread acknowledgement, alternative methods are used to protest and to memorialise the past, such as graffitti, murals and other forms of artistic expression.

16_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 1: Managing difficult pasts. How have societies around the world addressed the problem of missing persons?

Material for Unit 1 - Activity 3 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons The teacher can amend the texts in order to respond to their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources as well as the available teaching time.

Group 4: Morocco Morocco started experiencing a period of reform during the 1990s. King Hassan II, in response to growing internal and international criticism was compelled to establish the Advisory Council on Human Rights (CCDH) in 1990. A few years later, authorities released several hundred political opponents and a new constitution was developed.

King Hassan II was succeeded by his son King Mohammad VI, who ascended to the throne on July 30, 1999. The new king wanted to avoid following in his father's footsteps. In one of his first acts, King Mohammed VI, created the Independent Arbitration Commission (IAC) to compensate victims of arbitrary detention and forced disappearance. During almost four years of work the IAC decided more than 7,000 cases and awarded about $100 million in reparations.

As a result, Moroccan civil society organisations began to demand the adoption of a comprehensive approach to dealing with the past. A group of former victims established the Moroccan Forum for Truth and Justice (Forum Vérité et Justice, or FVJ) in October 1999 to campaign for an independent truth commission. FVJ carried out routine demonstrations to keep the issue on the agenda. Starting in March 2000, the association routinely demonstrated in front of the former secret detention centres. The leaders of the association initiated a series of sit-ins that gathered human rights activists and victims.

In 2003 the CCDH formally recommended that King Mohammed establish a truth commission to continue the transition to democracy. He inaugurated the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER) in January 2004 to investigate the abuses of the past. The IER established the responsibility of state actors and other parties for past abuses. It also outlined extensive individual reparation plans, proposed adoption of a communal reparations program and recommended that the prime minister issue a public apology for past abuses. The Commission also recommended reforming state institutions to strengthen the rule of law and prevent the recurrence of human rights violations.

Since 2006 the CCDH has made substantial progress in carrying out the IER’s reparations programs. The distribution of individual compensation to victims is nearly completed, with $85 million distributed to some 9,000 people. The CCDH has signed agreements with ministries and official agencies to provide victims and their families with medical care and vocational training at the state’s expense. It also identified 11 regions and communities as deserving of communal reparations. A program was launched in 2008 to manage and fund that effort. Part of the symbolic dimension of the measures intended to acknowledge past abuses and preserve the memory of them involves converting former prisons into social, cultural and economic centres and memorials.

The most important criticism brought to the Commission was its limited investigative powers and lack of authority to hold perpetrators of human rights abuses to account. Significant complaints have been raised about the impact of the Commission, related to the limited information the Commission released about the fate of the missing and the burial sites of the deceased. Furthermore, communal reparations programs are still in the implementation phase.

17_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 2: The Missing Persons of Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Starter Activity Current situation of missing persons in Cyprus According to the August 2011 statistical progress report of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP), there are 1,958 missing persons in Cyprus (1,464 Greek Cypriot and 494 Turkish Cypriot missing persons). In July 2007, the CMP began returning the remains of people who had gone missing in the conflict to their families. The first funerals in the Greek Cypriot community took place on 8 July 2007 and the first funerals in the Turkish Cypriot community occurred only a few days after on 13 July 2007. That process continues, and as of 30 June 2011, 797 people have been exhumed from burial sites all over the country. The CMP has opened 536 burial sites and the remains of almost 286 people have been returned to their families (226 missing Greek Cypriots and 60 missing Turkish Cypriots).

On 28 August 2006, the CMP announced the beginning of a programme of exhumations around the whole island, to be carried out by a team of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot archaeologists and anthropologists under the guidance of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. Together, Cypriot archaeologists excavate potential burial sites, looking for remains. Cypriot anthropologists working in the CMP's anthropological laboratory in the UN protected area analyse the exhumed remains and send bone samples to the Laboratory for Forensic Genetics. Cypriot scientists analyse the DNA of the bone samples with the samples provided by family members of missing people to identify the exhumed remains. Once the person is identified, the family of the missing person is informed by a member of the CMP and the remains are returned formally. The family has the opportunity to come to the CMP's facilities to view their loved one's remains, and to meet the scientists involved in the process.

As the CMP's mandate is limited to finding and identifying the remains of people who went missing, there is no formal capacity for families to learn the circumstances surrounding their loved one's death. The need to know what happened is brought up time and time again by families, and some of them have brought new cases at local and international levels claiming that the current mechanisms in place are unable to fulfil the legal responsibility of the authorities to carry out an effective investigation. The legal route both then and now has functioned as a source of pressure but has yet to produce any consistent or clear impact. Judgements have yet to be fully enforced and the issue of what constitutes an effective investigation and the role of authorities still remain open questions.

Once exhumations have taken place, new legal cases become possible, because, under the law, the remains are seen as new evidence, and therefore when families receive the remains from the CMP, they are able to initiate a new case. Therefore, as a result of the return of remains since 2007, a number of new cases have emerged. There are currently 16 such cases opened by Turkish Cypriots and 33 opened by Greek Cypriots at the ECtHR. Following the Court’s inquiries, authorities have launched parallel criminal investigations in both communities. Cases and investigations such as these are still ongoing, and issues relating to meeting the obligation to carry out an effective investigation and to provide information about the circumstances of death, including on the question of what should happen to those responsible for the deaths, are becoming increasingly pressing.

There are still many missing persons who have yet to be found as part of the CMP’s work, and misconceptions about the missing persons continue to be a facet of the public discourse in both communities. However, significant progress has been made in closing a painful chapter for the familes of those victims whose remains have been recovered. Concerns continue to be raised by victims’ groups about the length of time the process has been taking, and claims are made that access has been prevented to possible burial sites in the northern part of the island. It is certain though that the CMP operates as a successful model of institutionalised cooperation between the two communities, and is making its work known to the public, by engaging with victims' groups and other civil society efforts and through ongoing media outreach, regular updates to its website, and the production of a documentary film, Digging for the Future in 2010 (a copy of this film is provided in the Resources section of this pack).

The progress that has been made by the CMP, the increased public exposure about the issue and the efforts of various organisations, journalists and artists has meant that the issue of the missing people in Cyprus is being discussed more widely, and is no longer treated with the same level of taboo as had been the case in previous years. There is a greater expectation that authorities must act responsibly, more recognition of the importance of the work of the CMP, wider acknowledgement that both Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots have suffered, and a more nuanced discussion about what this process reveals about the past and about the future choices it presents for the people of Cyprus.

18_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 2: The missing persons of Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Activity 1 People who went missing in Cyprus due to the conflict: articles from Turkish and Greek language newspapers The teacher may choose how many articles to give to each group depending on their students’ age, comprehension ability and ability to work with written sources and also the available teaching time.

Bozkurt, 29 December 1963 Some Of Our Brothers Are Expected To Be Released Today: Greeks Offer To Return The Turks They Captured According to the midday news report of Cyprus Radio, the 700 Turkish men, women and children who were treacherously captured by Greeks and held as hostages are free. They agreed to pass them on to English officers once they were permitted to enter the Turkish side.

Also, Makarios has yet to reply to a telegraph sent to him a day ago by the Turkish Cypriot Journalists Society asking for the possibility of Istanbul based journalists currently in Cyprus along with Turkish Cypriot journalists to meet with Turkish individuals now being held as prisoners.

Below is a list of our brothers who are expected to be released today (a list of names of 65 people are given with their villages).

The same page also has an article about seven Turkish Cypriots captured by Greeks. It gives the background to the incidents in Ağırda (close to Kyrenia pass). ‘On Monday 3 Turkish gendermaries on duty wanted to ensure the safety of one of their Greek gendermarie friends. So, they took him in a car to Dikomo village. The same day, a group of armed Greeks captured 7 Turks.

Two days later, a group of armed Greeks outside of Ağırda fired at a Turkish Airlines plane flying from Cyprus to Turkey, but nothing happened.’

19_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Halkın Sesi, 5 January 1964 Three More Turks Missing As a result of the inquiries made to our newspaper, we have learned that the whereabouts of three Turks kidnapped by Greeks are still unknown. In addition to what we have already shared, after they were taken by the Greeks, no news was received from the two Turks after they had left Lapta and the one Turk who was taken from his house by Greeks in Küçük Kaymaklı and who has not been returned since. Şevket Kadir Hilmi and Ibrahim Nidai, two Turks from Lapta, did not return home after leaving to get food from Kyrenia on 24 December. The Greeks have given no information about these two Turks nor have they returned them.

Also, one of our citizens from the Küçük Kaymaklı area Irfan Mehmed, was taken by Greeks from his house in front of his mother, father and siblings, after they had searched his house. This brother has not been returned by the Greeks either.

According to some news received yesterday, a license from the Vadili Turkish Farmers Union belonging to Irfan Mehmed, who was a football player for them, that was on him when he was captured was found by the English at a Greek school in Kızılbaş.

20_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Bozkurt, 6 January 1964 Information Wanted About Missing Several Turks related to people who have gone missing since the beginning of the incidents came to our newspaper yesterday pleading in the name of humanity for those with any information to share it. They shared with our newspaper the identities and photographs of our brothers, who have been missing since the first days that the troubles started between the two communities. All the inquiries made by families of the missing have not yielded anything and the whereabouts of the missing are still unknown.

Inquiries made to our newspaper yesterday concerned three brothers who are still missing: Ozay Sait: This young person who worked as a driver for the American Assistance Service went missing on 23 December, when he left his home to go to work in the Greek section, and has not been seen since.

Sezai Nidai: Is 30 years old and was working as a carpenter at the RAF Camp. On 23 December, he left the Turkish section of Nicosia for his home near Bay-Pass and hasn’t been seen since.

Mustafa Arif: Our brother was 45 years old and worked as a guardian in the Central Prison. Three days after the troubles began, he fell ill and had to stay in the Nicosia Central Hospital. After the truce was announced, he was not found among the patients who were sent to the Turkish side, and even though the Hospital was asked, it has not been possible to obtain any information about his whereabouts.

21_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Halkın Sesi, 12 January 1964 Number Of Missing Citizens Increase With each passing day, the number of missing persons grows. Yesterday families of missing persons visited our office to make inquiries again. According to the information given, 22 year old Ibrahim Hüseyin from Koccatlı, Münür Yusuf from Küçük Kaymaklı, merchant Süleyman Hüseyin from Larnaca, and 16 year old middle school student Erdoğan Arif from Küçük Kaymakli, and 55 year old Mahmet Halil from Vasiliya are missing.

Celal Salih Has Been Found The other day our newspaper reported Celal Salih of Klavya from Küçük Kaymakli as missing, he has been found.

Missing Captain Ahmet Osman and Private Ekrem Emin from the Peristerona Gendarmerie have been missing for 20 days. According to information from our reporters, they were taken as prisoners by Greek privates from the Peristerona Gendarmerie the day that the Greeks started their barbaric attacks. No news has been received that they are still alive. The Red Cross is continuing their investigations on thıs subject.

22_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Halkın Sesi, 11 May 1964 A Serious Appeal Is Made To Find Missing Turks; Families Of Missing Turks Send a Petition To Gyani The Association of Missing Turks sent an appeal to UNFICYP commander Gyani to take urgent action to find the more than 200 Turks who have gone missing.

The letter was signed by 35 people and was addressed to: United Nations Secretary General, New York; UN Security Council President, New York; International Committee of the Red Cross Secretary, Geneva; Joint Relief Commission Commissioner, Nicosia; British High Commission, Nicosia;UN Cyprus Mediator, Nicosia; His Excellency A. Flores, UN Forces Political Officer, Nisocia; Council of Europe, European Commission for Human Rights Secretary, Strasbourg.

The full text of the letter is given below, it was signed by the Association’s Secretary Mübeccel Yılmaz, whose husband was captured from his car in front of English officers on 31 December 1963.

‘The 35 people whose names are signed below present this urgent petition for you to please take action.

Each of us is the closest relation to the person whose name appears next to our own names. These people have been missing for a long time, and despite our persistent efforts to find out where they are, or what befell them, we have not been able to learn anything.

We have appealled over and over again to numerous authorities - to the Turkish Missing Persons Office, to several officials of the English Red Cross, to the International Committee of the Red Cross, to various officials of the UN in Cyprus, the Contact Points, and anyone else that can come to mind – but with no result.

We and our families, not knowing whether our missing relatives are alive or not, are terribly devastated, suffering brutally every day, with the horrible pain growing with each passing day.

23_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

We sincerely believe that all the officials we made appeals to, did not and are not doing everything they can to rescue us from our pain. We are not saying that they did not try to help us or show an interest, but, probably they are busy with what they think are more important issues.

The purpose of our letter to you is to request that you take urgent action to the extent possible on what is a very humanitarian issue. After experiencing so much turmoil and anguish, our right to know about whether our relatives are alive or not cannot be delayed any longer.

The names of those below should not be presumed to be killed in the course of fighting because they all disappeared either during the ceasefire from their homes or while they were traveling.

Before closing this application, we would like to indicate that along with our relatives there are more than 200 individuals from the Turkish Community that have gone missing under similar conditions, but only 35 of us could gather in Nicosia to sign this petition. Undoubtedly we are also conveying the feelings of the relatives of those who were not able to sign this letter.

We were very disappointed to learn that the UN officials in Cyprus have been especially concerned with investigating mainly the 45 people who have gone missing since the start of their mission here.

We are in hope and earnestly desire that the appropriate officials will take effective action from here onwards.’

24_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Philelefteros, 15 May 1964 The Turks Of Famag[usta] Increase The Number Of The Allegedly Missing This morning the Turkish leadership of the old city of Famagusta delivered to the representative of the Red Cross and the Commadant of the Irish Detachment of the International Forces a new list of missing Turks, which increases their number from 14 to 20. The Commadant of the Irish Detachment Colonel Barry visited today the Major of the Gendarmerie Mr. Constandinidis, to whom he mentioned the allegations of the Turks. From an official source we are being informed that, up to now, no Turk has been arrested by the forces of the state in Famagusta, while the allegations of the Turks aim to justify the brutal crime which these neo-barbarians have committed in the evening of last Monday [within] the old city walls of Famagusta.

The Colonel [...] together with the Commandants of the Police and the Gendarmerie of Famagusta had a meeting [...] in the morning with [...] Mr. Paralikkis and dis[cussed] the issue of the entrances [........] within the [...] old city walls. We understand that [in this] way the port of [Famag]usta will have one door [...] used as entrance and one as exit, while all persons coming in and out of the port, Greek and [Turks] will undergo a [thorough] search.

According to the [same] information, Turks agree with this step [...] and the whole issue [is currently] under study by the Higher Competent Authorities.

25_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Philelefteros, 14 September 1974 Following The Ratification Of The Relevant Agreement, The Exchange of Hostages Takes Place The Day After Tomorrow. New Contact In Private Between Clerides and Denktaş The partial exchange of hostages will start on Monday, the day after tomorrow, based on an agreement which has been validated by the President of the Republic Mr. Clerides and the Turkish-Cypriot leader Mr. Denktaş. The exact number of those to be released was not announced, but a representative of UNFICYP mentioned that the decision applies to some hundreds. First of all, the wounded and sick will be released. Then will follow the release of prisoners and hostages aged under 18, as well as that of students and teachers. Prisoners aged more than 55, as well as priests and medical personnel will be released the soonest.

Yesterday the meeting of Clerides and Denktaş lasted almost two hours, during which the issue of the release of hostages was discussed, in the presence of representatives from the United Nations and the Red Cross.

This was followed by a meeting of 45 minutes in private between Clerides and Denktaş in the presence of one representative of the UN only. During this meeting, the two leaders exchanged views on the issue of the refugees and on other fundamental issues more generally.

A representative of the United Nations stated that the meeting yesterday was held in a constructive atmosphere, but avoided to state whether the plan of the Red Cross for the release of all prisoners and hostages was discussed.

The first exchange of hostages is expected to take place on Monday in a place close to Nicosia.

26_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

After the meeting, Denktaş stated that as soon as the wounded are released, the release of the other categories will start. He said that the Turkish prisoners are 3,366 while the Greeks are 2,327.

The Order Of The Release The prisoners will be released in the following order: 1) wounded and sick 2) people less than 18 years old, students and teachers 3) people more than 55 years old, priests and medical personnel.

Those of them who happen to be in the prisons of Turkey, will be transferred to Cyprus the soonest.

Finally, during the meeting of Clerides and Denktaş yesterday, the issues pertaining to the function of schools and the rescue of animals were also discussed.

The next meeting was set at 10:00 in the morning this coming Friday at ‘Ledra Palace’.

In Regard To Blackmail With reference to the BBC news item that Denktaş is blackmailing that he will not allow the release of hostages before the resolution of the issue of the Turkish Cypriots who were made refugees at the Akrotiri base, the Government Spokesman said yesterday: ‘No such issue was raised.’

Furthermore, the agreement achieved yesterday for the commencement of hostage releases from Monday onwards also confutes this. It is not unlikely, however, for Denktaş to raise such an issue during the talks concerning the release of all hostages.

As to the newspaper articles with regard to the invitation of Clerides – Denktaş by the Council of Europe, the Government spokesman said: ‘Mr. President has officially nothing in mind. It is possible that this decision has been taken by the Council of Europe, but in any case we have not received an invitation yet’.

Responding to another question, the spokesman said: ‘As we have repeatedly stressed, the handling of the Cyprus issue is made in close collaboration with the Greek Government and nobody acts at will. Furthermore, we repeat that the topic of the talks with Denktaş pertains to humanitarian issues’.

With reference to the Clerides – Denktaş private talks, the spokesman stressed that: ‘The President of the Republic and Denktaş do not hold talks on the substance of the Cyprus problem. Besides it has been stated that, during their talks in private they discuss the issue of the refugees and merely investigate, unofficially, the views of either side on the broader political issue and, especially, with regards to the preconditions that could pave the ground for resolving the whole political problem. Such investigative contacts are underway also outside Cyprus, without them being judged as an attempt to violate any of the principles set’.

27_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Bozkurt, 16 September 1974 One More Massacre Is Revealed Exhumations In The Courtyard Of Namık Kemal Lycee Find The Remains Of Two Of Our Fighters Who Were Bound To Each Other And Then Murdered A day does not pass when more examples of the barbaric massacres of the Greek make our hair stand on end. A day does not pass when we shiver in sadness and greive over the brutality of the Greeks. A day does not pass when families, close friends hold each other and cry.

Ibrahim Hasan Gürsoy and 22 year old Ziya Halil have been found at last. The exhumations have been going after every mound of dirt, to try to find the martyrs who were killed barbarically, taking their bodies out piece by piece.

Ibrahim and Ziya were heroes at the defence that was made at the Namık Kemal Lycee. There was no news about them since the 20th of July. After the school was taken over by the Greeks, they were not able to escape to the walled city of Mağusa.

On Saturday morning, Samire, the wife of Ibrahim Hasan Gürsoy, municipal workers, and teachers of NMK, started digging suspected places. This was not a job for shovels though. In the afternoon, once the bulldozer came, the exhumations gained pace.

As they went deeper into the ground near the football field of the Namik Kemal Lycee, the smells got stronger. Like the massacres at Muratağa and Atlılar, a similar terrifying picture was about to emerge. There were reporters from Tercüman with us.

Altunç described the scene: ‘First a head was taken out. The skull. Next to it, a thin body wearing a shirt with a red and white pattern and blue-green pants.

With each piece, they said ‘This is Ziya’. And then, when his brother yelled ‘Ziya’s shoes’ all eyes turned to the bulldozer again.

There were heels on his feet. Then Ibrahim’s skull was found. Because I knew Ibrahim well, even with only half a head of hair on the deformed skull, I could still recognise him. Ziya’s father, Ibrahim’s wife Samire fainted while screaming, Ibrahim’s brother Ali Hasan jumped into the grave and started holding the pieces of his brother’s body, crying. It took a lieutenant’s strength to get him to leave.

28_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Ibrahim Gürsoy’s and Ziya Halil’s bodies were tied to each other. Those who had tied their hands and arms had also shot them.

Another possibility is that they were hung from the cypress tree nearby.

The exhumation was also witnessed by UN soldiers.

One of the fighter lieutenants who had been watching the exhumation from the beginning, as soon as the first body was found, said that a UN soldier who practiced on the field had told him: ‘we knew they were buried there’.

They knew but they didn’t say anything. Here: the UN soldiers and their function on the island. The world should see this and learn.

The bodies of Ziya and Ibrahim were finally removed near dusk by the bulldozer, and taken to the graveyard in the castle and buried.

29_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Philelefteros, 22 September 1974 ‘I Was Never Beaten Up Like That’ With Punches and Clubs at the ‘Reception’ at Adana 42 Greek Cypriots and 111 Turkish Cypriots Free What was surprising in the narratives of the 42 released Greek Cypriots – wounded and sick – who were exchanged yesterday with 111 Turkish Cypriots, was their ‘reception’ in the prisons of Adana.

In Adana, as soon as they got off the trucks, they had to pass perforce through an ‘alley of guards’ in order to be beaten up, to such an extent that they had never experienced in their life. The prison guards were hitting them with punches, wooden clubs and rubber whips all over their body, from their face to their feet.

The case of the soldier Andreas Andreou from Aglantzia is [very telling].

A Turk kicked him – despite the fact that he was wounded on the leg – and knocked him down a staircase with many steps, crushing his bones.

Georgios Yakoumi from Angastina, while eating his roast beef in the Hotel Training School – where they were carried to be cared after – he was shouting ‘I was never beaten up and hit with clubs like that in my life...’.

And the most paradoxical thing: after this ‘reception’; in the prisons, everybody was treated relatively well. They had a person in charge in every ward responsible to forward the ‘complaints’ made by prisoners to the officer in charge. Whenever the officer entered the wards, the guards were shouting to the hostages: ’shun’!....

The Exchange Yesterday Τhe exchange yesterday, again, took place at ‘Ledra Palace’, under the burning sun. The 42 released prisoners were transferred from Turkey together with 390 more Greek Cypriot hostages.

The released were carried to their preferred places. Two were detained in the hospital: Andreas Andreou and Nikos Nikolaou from Orounda.

Statements by UNFICYP A representative of UNFICYP mentioned that, from next week onwards, maximum facilitations will be offered to students who will travel abroad to continue their studies.

30_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

He also expressed the hope that, within the next few days, all foreign citizens who have been trapped in Karpasia will be transferred away from this area.

The Released Kostakis Evripidou 21 years old, Kostas S. Kamilaris 60, Kostis K. Mesouroumi 48, Vasos A. Vasou 19, Yiannis Michail 42, Kostakis Th. Skaliotis 29, Panayis Filippou 48, Georgios K. Mavrommatis 39, Andreas Zacharia 35, Yiannakis Melissis 28, Andreas Th. Rikkou 22, Kyriakos A. Prodromou 19, Christos Fourouklas 50, Kyriakos P. Petroutsios 47, Kyriakos G. Kouristi 22, Kostas D. Stylianou 48, Giorgos Prokopi 33, Georgios Christofi 36, Chrysanthos Themistokli 47, Konstantis Stavri 47, Spyros Andreou 41, Giorgos Yiakoumi 40, Christos Nikolaou 45, Sotiris Yianni 60, Petros Nikola 37, Stelios P. Stylianakis 43, Andrikkos Andreou 19, Nikodimos Christofi 23, Yiannis Christodoulou 18, Georgios Charalambides 49, Michalis Simou 49, Savvas Pavlatos 50, Odysseus Ioannou 54, Stavros Eleftheriou 36, Theodoulos Andrea 47, Sotiris Michail 34, Antonis Christou 47, Kostas Iliadis 54, Sotiris M. Violaris 31, Nikolaos Nikou 18 and Nikolaos Polykarpou 60.

They Narrate Giannakis Melissis, reservist soldier, from Pera Nisou: ‘On the 14th of August I was in our positions in Koutsoventis until 9.45 a.m.

Until that time nobody had informed us that our lines in Mia Milia had been broken. We were listening to the radio which was saying ‘our forces remain steadily in their positions’.

At 10 our captain informed us that we had to retreat too. So we left and we went to Kythrea. For this reason myself and another 11 soldiers spend the night with the family of a man from Kythrea, who was working in the flour mill of Mitsides. In another house next to us, many more soldiers spent the night.

The next morning however, we decided to surrender so as not to get the family who hosted us into trouble. We could hear gunshots outside.

We took a sheet and went out holding it overhead. The Turks saw us and understood that we were surrendering.

From there they took us to Djiaos. They took away anything we had on us: watches, money, lighters. We spent one night in the school in Djiaos hungry and thristy. Whenever we asked for water they were tightening our hands even more. Afterwards they took us to Neo Chorio. Everything there was looted. The guards brought us hot beers – when we said that we were thirsty – and ordered us to drink. My co-villager Panayiotis Fakoutas – who is now in Adana – refused and the Turks grabbed him from the side-burn and torn it. Then they grabbed him from his hair at the back of his head and they torn that too, to such a degree that you could see the young man’s skull.

I decided to drink in order to avoid the troubles. But while I was drinking the hot beer, they speared me in the abdomen. They also burned my covillager Stavron Dimou with a cigarette in his face and chest. Afterwards they took us at Poulidis’ with our eyes and legs tied. One night while they were taking us to Kyrenia I managed to loosen the bandage of my eyes, by rubbing my face on the bus seat. And when we reached Kyrenia I saw loaded on a ship ‘saloon’ cars and big boxes.

While entering the prisons of Adana, we were beaten up really hard. Also, one night a guard came and without any reason he grabbed me from the hair and hit me on an iron door. I was badly hurt and blood was coming out of my neck. Yet, this blood was the reason that I was released...’

(Narrations of other released prisoners will be published in our coming issues).

31_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Philelefteros, 20 October 1974 The Hostages Worry About Their Relatives People From Karpasia Prefer To Go To Their Homes Another Exchange Of Hostages Before Wednesday CAPTION OF A PICTURE: With their anguish culminating, yesterday thousands of people from all over Cyprus flooded the Hotel Training School in Nicosia once more, where the hostages are transferred. For all these people the exchange yesterday ended leaving different feelings. Some left happy with their beloved in their embrace and others left loaded with even more anxiety than before. See below for details of the hostages release yesterday.

CAPTION OF A PICTURE: After the end of the hostages exchange you could hear laments. A woman was parted from her husband during the first days of the invasion, in Palekythro. Yesterday, as with every other exchange, she was waiting for him. But he was absent once more.

CAPTION OF A PICTURE: A picture that seems to have been taken in some other time – the time of Nazi camps. And yet, the young man in the picture is a Greek Cypriot who has just returned from captivity in Turkey. ‘Stand there and smile’ a reporter shouted at him. And he stood and smiled... On this t-shirt he has printed the slogan: ‘make flowers, not bombs’.

The hostages from Karpasia who are released by the Turks prefer, almost in their totality, to return to their houses in the territories occupied by the Turkish. Yesterday, 200 more hostages were released. From these, 136 (almost all of them from Karpasia) preferred

32_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

to be transferred to their occupied villages. (The day before yesterday 121 more hostages did the same). As the representative of the Red Cross stated, it is expected that all these hostages will be collectively transferred to their homes. In return, 297 Turkish Cypriots, most of them from Limassol, were released.

Today, about 8,000 women and children live in the province of Karpasia, about which the Secretary-General of the United Nations Dr. Veltheim the night before yesterday stated that ‘their living conditions have worsened’.

The Exchange Will Take Place Before Wednesday The Vice President of the Cypriot Red Cross Mr. I. Iosifidis said that ‘possibly another exchange of hostages will take place before Wednesday’.

Obvious Contrast While the exchange was taking place in the yard of ‘Ledra Palace’, the contrast in the appearance of the exchanged hostages was obvious: the Turkish-Cypriots had a nice appearance, their hair well-combed, with clothes and shoes in good condition, holding in their hands suitcases, pullovers and jackets. The Greek-Cypriots were physical and psychological wrecks. With their clothes torn, some of them barefoot, without their crosses, watches etc.

‘Send A Request To Ecevit’!

In the Hotel Training School we found the opportunity to ask a hostage that came barefoot. He was Georgios Koufopilis from Assia.

He told us: ‘When they arrested me, they ordered us to take off our shoes and throw them in the fields. We remained barefoot like this for two months. There in Turkey we repeatedly told them: ‘Gentlemen, we need shoes’. But they were telling us: ‘You have to send a request to Ecevit....’! We were many people from Assia barefoot’.

A Man From Karpasia Is Speaking When we asked Alekos Kyriakou from Yialousa why he chose to come to the Greek sector he answered: ‘The Red Cross asked where we would like to go, clarifying that if we would be coming to the Greek sector they could bring our families here, but if we preferred to go to our villages we would have to stay there.

When they arrested us, my wife and four children stayed in Yialousa. I ‘ve sent them five messages with the Red Cross but I never received an answer. I didn’t know what answer to give to the Red Cross. Others said they wanted to go to Karpasia. It was a matter of luck really. ...’ see page 6...

33_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Philelefteros, 25 October 1974 ‘We Will Go To The Turkish Territories To Find Missing Persons’ The Heartbreaking Events At Nicosia Yesterday CAPTION OF A PICTURE: The pained mother shouts ‘I want my child’. Details of yesterday’s event below.

As Saturday approaches, the last day of hostage exchanges, and missing persons still remain, the agony and sorry of their relatives culminates even more.

‘Which one of us will be able to sleep during these 48 hours’, the President of the Committee of the Missing Persons’ Relatives Reverend Christoforos Christoforou characteristically said, during their new assembly yesterday. ‘We will not sleep because our anxiety won’t let us, regarding the destiny of our children, of our flesh and blood.’

The pain and agony of the missing persons’ relatives was somewhat mitigated by the acting President of the Republic Mr. Gl. Clerides who, in his speech in an assembly outside his Presidential Office, assured them that he will use every available vehicle for discovering the missing persons.

Mr. Glafkos Clerides characteristically mentioned that strong demarches have been made to all directions, both in Cyprus and abroad, in order for the Turks to provide us with the full list of the missing persons and in order for us to manage their release.

34_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Many Will Be Found Furthermore, the acting President of the Republic expressed his hope that the resolution, which will soon be approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations, will also include a provision for the discovery and release of missing persons.

'I am sure,' Mr. Clerides stressed, 'that the international public opinion will not allow the existence of missing persons still alive to be held as hostages. For this reason, I’m hoping that many missing persons will be found'. Mr. Clerides mentioned that, even now, there is some positive information for the existence of alive missing persons in various areas of Cyprus.

And added: ‘Our aim now is that the Red Cross visits these areas, so as to discover and record the missing persons, before we achieve their release’.

Communication With Makarios Finally, Mr. Clerides gave the promise that both himself, the Government and President Makarios, with whom he communicated last night, will make all efforts possible for the discovery of missing persons.

A representative of the Committee of the Missing Persons’ Relatives expressed his support to Mr. Clerides and his Government.

Ealier, the relatives of the missing persons had congregated in the church of St. Demetrios in Acropolis where they approved a resolution addressed to the acting President of the Republic and the International Red Cross [...] and burst into tears. Father Christoforos stressed that both the Government and the International Red Cross must appoint units which will deal exclusively with the issue of the discovery of missing persons.

He also expressed the bitter complaint that some do not care about the drama of our people and, unfortunately, are going out and having fun until late in the night.

We Live With The Hope He also referred to the hopes that the released hostages provide us with, when they mention that they had seen some of the missing persons. ‘When we show them pictures and they tell us that they had seen them, they are giving us lots of hope. And we live with that hope. We live and we wait for their return’.

We Will Even Go To The Turkish Territories Father Christoforos also added the following: ‘if our children don’t return by Saturday, then we will go to the Turkish territories to find them. We will go even if they arrest us too. We will go even to Turkey. We are not rebels, but we have to find our children...’.

Father Christoforos was interrupted by the congregated people with the shout [...] See page 6...

35_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Philelefteros, 10 November 1974 The Turks Continue The Abductions Of Greeks: Fourteen Persons Missing Turkish insurgents, in defiance not only of the appeals but also of the agreement for cease-fire, continue the abduction of Greeks.

Thus, at noon in broad daylight, a group of armed Turks abducted eleven Greeks from the suburb of Trachonas, amongst which were eight women, a small boy at the age of three and two men.

The abduction of the above took place under the following circumstances. Around noon last Wednesday all the above visited their ruined homes, which were located in the district of ‘Philadelphia’ in Trachonas, in order to collect whatever has remained from the looting by the Turks, at which point they were surrounded by large numbers of Turks, who, under the threat of weapons led them towards an unknown direction The abducted are the following: Anna Georgiou Pepe, aged 45, her daughter Frosoula aged 18, Georgios Chr. Penindari 27 and his wife Maroula 25, Andreas Spitaliotis 45, his wife Eleni 40 and their two daughters, Mary 17 and Chrsitina 3, Maroula Achilleos 43 and her daughter Androula 19 and Kalliopi Dimitriou aged 33.In the same way, it was announced that three persons from Pallouriotissa, Andreas Georgiou Kosankas, Iosif Ioannou and Andreas Georgiou Skottis are in the hands of the Turks and are held as hostages.

36_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Transgressing Police Officers Yesterday, the police communique cited many incidences of Turkish police officers and gendarmes who were seen transgressing the law. Specifically the communique mentions the following: -

A Turkish custom officer in Dhekeleia named Salih Mustafa from Kalavasos was arrested yesterday carrying a knife.

-

The Police Inspector Hussein Fiousouf, who deserted his post, was seen yesterday evening carrying a ‘Sterling’ and threatening Greek civilians in the area of Omorfita.

-

Three Turkish police officers were arrested yesterday afternoon driving a ‘Landrover’ type of car and having in their possession a revolver and 72 bullets. The police vehicle, as well as the revolver and the munitions were confiscated, while the Turkish police officers were released.

Official Communique For the abduction of Greeks in Trachonas the following official communique was issued: ‘Yesterday between 15:00 and 16:00 Greek Cypriots returned to their old house in the district of Philadelphia in Trachonas in order to carry some objects to their new homes. Until now, these people have not returned. It is understood that they are in the hands of Turkish insurgents and that vigorous efforts are being made for their liberation.’

37_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 2: The missing persons of Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Activity 2 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons in Cyprus Group 1: The United Nations The United Nations has been as a key actor Cyprus since 1964, when the December 1963 dispute over constitutional changes and ensuing intercommunal clashes drew the involvement of the United Nations in order to prevent further conflict. On 4 March 1964, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 186 (1964) which established the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP).

UNFICYP was active from 1964 onwards. In addition to its security function, in which it sought to prevent fighting between the two communities and contribute to the return of law and order, it also tried to faciliate communication between the communities, addressed humanitarian concerns, and also worked with the ICRC in identifying missing persons and coordinating the exchange of prisoners.

After 1974, the UN focused its activities on addressing the consequences of the conflict at that time, providing immediate humanitarian assistance and creating safe zones. Since then, it has led the efforts in the inter-communal talks between the two communities to achieve a comprehensive settlement. The UN Security Council has also issued, over the years, a number of resolutions and reports on the Cyprus issue.

One of the achievements of the inter-communal discussions faciliated by the UN between the leaders of the two communities was the 1981 Agreement that led to the establishment of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP). The Secretary General of the UN appoints the third member of the CMP. See http://www.unficyp.org for more information.

38_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 2: The missing persons of Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Activity 2 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons in Cyprus Group 2: The International Committee of the Red Cross After violence erupted in Cyprus in December 1963, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent its first delegates to Cyprus in January 1964. The ICRC was involved in leading humanitarian and relief operations in Cyprus. It was also involved in coordinating efforts to trace missing persons, and to facilitate exchanges of prisoners between the two communities. Once the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Cyprus arrived after March 1964, the ICRC coordinated its activities with them. During the early 1960s, the Turkish Red Crescent Society established the main hospital in the Turkish Cypriot areas, sending many doctors to Cyprus to help the sick and wounded Turkish Cypriots, who were no longer able to rely on the medical services of the Republic. The Red Crescent also provided relief services for the Turkish Cypriot refugees during this time.

In response to the 1974 war in Cyprus, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began to coordinate UN relief and humanitarian assistance, as a result of a decision taken under Security Council Resolution 361 in July 1974. Cooperating with the UNHCR, the ICRC helped procure, transport, and deliver food, water, medicine, temporary shelters, and blankets to the large numbers of refugees in both communities. During and after the conflict, the Cyprus Red Cross, which had been established in 1950 as a branch of the British Red Cross, and the ICRC played an important role establishing contact between relatives, and collected information on the missing.

The ICRC continued to play an instrumental role in addressing humanitarian issues following the 1974 conflict. One result of the ICRC’s efforts was the 1981 Agreement between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot leaders to establish the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus. The Agreement called for a three-member committee. Along with the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot members, it was agreed that the third member would be an official selected by the ICRC with the agreement of the two sides and appointed by the UN Secretary-General.

Through the CMP, the ICRC has been involved in addressing the missing persons issue in Cyprus. As an international organisation working on similar issues around the world, the ICRC has a great deal of experience and expertise that it has been able to share with Cyprus. It contributed in particular to its new phase of work of the CMP by offering its advice and support, particularly on issues relating to the application of forensic anthrolopology and enhancing the capacity of the CMP to conduct its work.

See http://www.icrc.org for more information.

39_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 2: The missing persons of Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Activity 2 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons in Cyprus Group 3: The European Court of Human Rights The Republic of Cyprus submitted a number of inter-state applications to the European Court of Human Rights against Turkey, claiming several violations of human rights law. In 1987, Turkey accepted the right to apply individually to the ECtHR and in 1990 recognised the compulsory jurisdiction of the court. Thereafter, individual Cypriots started to turn to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the early 1990s for cases on missing persons.

The first major application made by individuals on the issue of the missing persons was filed in 1990 on behalf of the following missing persons: Andreas Varnava, Andreas Loizides, Philippos Constantinou, Demetris Theocharides, Panicos Charalambous, Eleftherios Thoma, Savvas Hadjipantelis, Savvas Apostolides and Leondis Demetriou Sarmas. Settled in 2008, the ECtHR found in Varnava and others v. Turkey that Turkey was in violation of Article 2 (right to life), Article 3 (prohibition of inhumane or degrading treatment) and Article 5 (right to liberty and security) of the European Convention of Human Rights.

This finding supports a number of other decisions made on inter-state cases, raised by Cyprus against Turkey: the European Commission of Human Rights in 1976, 1983 and 1999 found that Turkey violated fundamental articles of the European Convention on Human Rights and on 10 May 2001 the ECtHR ruled against Turkey, finding the State in violation of Article 2, Article 3 and Article 5.

Although the Court’s rulings have been critical to motivating the authorities to take greater action, and thus served as an important form of recourse for the families, they have also left relatives with limited options, as seen by the experience of Turkish Cypriot relatives. In 2002 and 2003, Turkish Cypriot relatives submitted 4 separate cases (Karabardak and Others v. Cyprus, Baybora and Others v. Cyprus Şemi and Others v. Cyprus, Hüseyin and Göçer v. Cyprus) to the ECtHR, but these were found inadmissable stating that the relatives had waited too long to submit their cases.

The same criteria has also led the Court to reject 51 other cases.

As the CMP's mandate is limited to finding and identifying the remains of people who went missing, there is no formal capacity for families to learn the circumstances surrounding their loved one's death. The need to know what happened is brought up time and time again by families, and some of them have brought new cases at local and international levels claiming that the current mechanisms in place are unable to fulfil the legal responsibility of the authorities to carry out an effective investigation. The legal route both then and now has functioned as a source of pressure but has yet to produce any consistent or clear impact. Judgements have yet to be fully enforced and the issue of what constitutes an effective investigation and the role of authorities still remain open questions.

Once exhumations have taken place, new legal cases become possible, because, under the law, the remains are seen as new evidence, and therefore when families receive the remains from the CMP, they are able to initiate a new case. Therefore, as a result of the return of remains since 2007, a number of new cases have emerged. There are currently 16 such cases opened by Turkish Cypriots and 33 opened by Greek Cypriots at the ECtHR. Following the Court’s inquiries, authorities have launched parallel criminal investigations in both communities.

See http://www.echr.coe.int for more information.

40_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 2: The missing persons of Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Activity 2 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons in Cyprus Group 4: The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus In 1981 the talks between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot leaders held under the auspices of the United Nations led to an agreement to set up the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, mandated to ‘establish the fate of missing persons. The Committee does not attempt to establish the cause of death or attribute responsibility for the death of missing persons (Article 11, CMP Terms of Reference)’. The CMP consists of two members appointed by each community, along with a third member appointed by the Secretary-General of the UN. The committee members take decisions on the basis of consensus. Although the CMP was established in 1981, it took many years for it to operate on an effective basis.

Reflecting the increased pressure from various directions that was building up, the UN Secretary-General stepped in again in December 2003 and August 2004, calling on the leaders of the two communities to help the CMP activate its work. He asked that the CMP ‘conclude the remaining investigative work on both sides' and agree to implement the agreement of 31 July 1997 which provides for the exchange of information regarding known burial sites and the return of remains of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot missing persons, in line with the CMP's terms of reference. Finally, in 2004, the Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat and Greek Cypriot leader Tassos Papadopoulos agreed to reactivate the CMP. The agreement by the leaders to reactivate the CMP is what has led to concrete progress on the missing persons issue since 2004. On 28 August 2006, the CMP announced the beginning of a programme of exhumations around the whole island, to be carried out by a team of Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot archaeologists and anthropologists under the guidance of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team.

Stages of the CMP’s Work: 1. Cypriot archaeologists excavate potential burial sites, looking for remains.

2. Cypriot anthropologists working in the CMP's anthropological laboratory in the UN protected area analyse the exhumed remains and send bone samples to the Laboratory for Forensic Genetics.

3. Cypriot scientists analyse the DNA of the bone samples with the samples provided by family members of missing people to identify the exhumed remains.

4. Once the person is identified, the family of the missing person is informed by a member of the CMP and the remains are returned formally.

The family has the opportunity to come to the CMP's facilities to view their loved one's remains, and to meet the scientists involved in the process.

In July 2007, the CMP began returning the remains of people who had gone missing in the conflict to their families. The first funerals in the Greek Cypriot community occurred on 8 July 2007 and the first funerals in the Turkish Cypriot community occurred only a few days after on 13 July 2007.

That process continues, and as of 30 June 2011, 797 people have been exhumed from burial sites all over the country. The CMP has opened 536 burial sites and the remains of almost 286 people have been returned to their families (226 missing Greek Cypriots and 60 missing Turkish Cypriots).

The CMP operates as a successful model of institutionalised cooperation between the two communities. Along with finding the remains of missing persons, it is also making its work known to the public, by engaging with victims groups and other civil society efforts and through ongoing media outreach, regular updates to its website, and the production of a documentary film, Digging for the Future in 2010.

See http://www.cmp-cyprus.org for more information.

41_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 2: The missing persons of Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Activity 2 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons in Cyprus Group 5: The Pancyprian Organisation of the Relatives of Undeclared Prisoners and Missing Persons The organisation was formed by Greek Cypriots relatives of missing persons in 1975. Since its formation, it has conducted a number of activities to serve the needs of the relatives, such as advocating for their human rights, building public awareness both within and outside Cyprus about the issue of missing persons in Cyprus. According to their website: ‘The aim of our Organisation is to achieve long lasting respect for the human rights of our missing persons and their relatives and to ensure that every family with a missing person among its members is officially informed on the face of documentary evidence about the fate of their beloved. In parallel, we endeavour to contribute to the awareness of the international community so that appropriate measures would be taken to guard against the use of such unacceptable methods in the future and to prevent the recurrence of any such tragic and inhumane experiences.’ See http://www.missing-cy.org.cy for more information.

42_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 2: The missing persons of Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Activity 2 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons in Cyprus Group 6: Association of Martyrs’ Families and War Veterans The organisation was formed by Turkish Cypriots with relatives affected by the conflict in Cyprus. It was established in 1975 and represents Turkish Cypriot victims of the violence from 1956 onwards, including those who were known to be killed and those who are missing. Along with seeking to address the needs of its members, who are primarily relatives of the victims, the Association aims to honor the heroic efforts of those who lost their lives defending Turkish Cypriots during the Cyprus conflict.

See http://www.kktc-sehitaileleri.org for more information.

43_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 2: The missing persons of Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Activity 2 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons in Cyprus Group 7: Bicommunal Initiative of Relatives of Missing Persons, Victims of Massacres and other Victims of 1963-74 Events Members of the Bi-communal Initiative of Relatives of Missing Persons, Victims of Massacres and other Victims of 1963-74 Events, following the opening of the crossing points in 2003 and the decision to commence exhumations and identifications of the missing from both sides in 2005, have come together to help each other, as well as the CMP, trace the fate of the missing, raise public awareness on the issue of missing persons and share and soothe each other’s suffering. As victims of the events of the last 50 years, they have found that what they share is not hatred but a shared pain, and as they work towards a mutual understanding of the past and a common way of looking at the future.

The Bicommunal Initiative goes to schools, villages, and meeting groups all over the country talking to people in environments as diverse as academic conferences and local community gatherings in small villages. Its members speak about their shared experiences of pain, and their desire that the atrocities of the past be exposed, spoken about, acknowledged, and learned from. Often, they ask communities to come forward with information regarding particular cases. They always highlight their view that the pain of loss is shared by both communities, and often emphasise the link between exposing stories of violence about the past and increasing general awareness of suppressed narratives and preventing further conflict in the future.

44_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 2: The missing persons of Cyprus Material for Unit 2 - Activity 2 Responses by groups to the issue of missing persons in Cyprus Group 8: The Journalists The writings of pioneering journalists Andreas Paraschos and Sevgül Uludağ led to a wider discussion and awareness on the missing persons at the public level. From 1995 onwards, Paraschos’s coverage of the Lakatamia exhumations led to significant internal debates within the Greek Cypriot community which questioned the responsibilities and actions of their leadership towards missing persons. He has continued to write about the issue since then, covering the exhumation process and the burials.

In 2002, Uludağ began to investigate the issue of the missing persons with the purpose of showing the commonality of pain and suffering that both sides have experienced. Her articles, which became a daily feature of newspapers in both communities, presented personal stories of individuals, Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot, who were involved in the missing persons issue, either as the relative of the victim or as a witness to certain events.

Their writings were important in several respects: it gave victims a space to tell their own stories, it presented a different perspective that had been silenced by the official narratives in both communities for so long, and it also highlighted the limitations of the way that history is currently presented and understood in the Cypriot context.

A book based on Uludağ’s work, Oysters with the Missing Pearls, was published in 2005 in Turkish, has been translated into Greek and English. She has also set up a hotline for people to call in anonymously and give information about the location of burial sites or stories about people who have been declared missing, which she passes onto the CMP. She has also been instrumental in building bridges between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot victims which has led to the establishment of a bicommunal initiative bringing together relatives of the missing from both communities.

Sevgül Uludağ presenting Oysters with the Missing Pearls. Photograph courtesy of Sevgül Uludağ.

45_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 3: Why have different responses to Cyprus’ missing persons problem emerged over time?

Materials for Unit 3 - Activity 2 Timeline of major events 1950s:

Sporadic reports about people going missing due to the struggles of the time.

1963-64: The beginning of the inter-communal clashes in 1963 results in a dramatic increase of reports on atrocities and missing persons in both communities.

1974:

The events of July-August lead to a new peak of reports on atrocities and missing persons in both communities.

1974:

Inter-communal negotiations on the issue of missing persons begin and last for three years without significant progress.

1975:

Formation of the Association of Martyrs' Families and War Veterans (Turkish Cypriot group). Formation of the Pancyprian Organisation of the Relatives of Undeclared Prisoners and Missing Persons (Greek Cypriot group).

1975:

UN resolution in which the General Assembly expresses its concern about the fate of a considerable number of Cypriots who are missing as a result of armed conflict in Cyprus. The resolution also expresses the UN’s support for the efforts of the Red Cross.

1981:

The two communities set up the CMP under the auspices of the UN.

1995:

Journalist Andreas Paraschos’ reports about the demands of several mothers and wives concerning the Lakatamia cemetery, where they believed the remains of their loved ones to be buried.

1997:

Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders reach an agreement to share information about the missing persons.

1999:

Exhumations are carried out at Lakatamia and St. Constantine and Helen cemeteries by the non-governmental organisation Physicians for Human Rights.

2002:

Journalist Sevgül Uludağ starts covering the issue through interviews with victims’ families.

2002:

An official exhumation is conducted in the south and as a result the bodies of 46 Greek Cypriot men on the missing persons list are positively identified.

2003:

Turkish Cypriot authorities ease the restrictions on crossing the divide.

2004:

UN-led Annan Plan referendum in both communities. The Turkish Cypriot community accepts the plan while the Greek Cypriot community rejects it.

2004:

UNSG Kofi Annan sends letters to the two leaders with proposals to address the issue of the missing persons.

2005:

CMP starts searching for information about mass graves and exploratory exhumations begin.

2006:

CMP exhumations begin around the island.

2007:

Remains start to be returned to the families by the CMP; Nelson Mandela announces the formation of The Elders. The Bicommunal Initiative of Relatives of Missing Persons, Victims of Massacres and other Victims of 1963-1974 Events is established.

2008:

Three members of The Elders, Lakhdar Brahimi, Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu, pay a two-day visit to Cyprus to support the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities who recently started direct, open-ended negotiations to try to reunify the island.

2009:

Many testimonies and reports start coming out, books, legal cases, events, conferences take place related to the missing persons issue.

2010:

The CMP launches its documentary Digging for the Future; continued engagement with the issue by civil society and the press.

2011:

The Elders launch their documentary, Cyprus: Digging the Past in Search of the Future.

46_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 3: Why have different responses to Cyprus’ missing persons problem emerged over time?

Materials for Unit 3 - Activity 2 Group 1: Pancyprian Organisation of the Relatives of Undeclared Prisoners and Missing Persons The organisation was formed by Greek Cypriot relatives of missing persons. It was established in 1975.

Source A Introduction to the website of the Pancyprian Organisation of the Relatives of Undeclared Prisoners and Missing Persons ‘The aim of our Organisation is to achieve long lasting respect for the human rights of our missing persons and their relatives and to ensure that every family with a missing person among its members is officially informed on the face of documentary evidence about the fate of their beloved.

In parallel, we endeavour to contribute to the awareness of the international community so that appropriate measures would be taken to guard against the use of such unacceptable methods in the future and to prevent the recurrence of any such tragic and inhumane experiences.’

Source B Background information provided by the Pancyprian Organisation of the Relatives of Undeclared Prisoners and Missing Persons on the organisation’s website ‘Since the summer of 1974 when Turkey invaded Cyprus militarily and placed 1/3 of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus under its control the fate of hundreds of people remains unknown.

The initial number of missing persons was 1619, including non-combatants, women and small children. On the face of evidence, all these people disappeared during or after the Turkish invasion in the areas captured by the Turkish troops. There is corroborating evidence from eye witnesses and international Organisations that many of these persons had been arrested by the Turkish invasion forces or armed Turkish Cypriot groups and held for a period of time in Turkish prisons.

For three decades the Turkish side maintained a completely negative attitude on this humanitarian issue. It refused to have a serious discussion and turned a deaf ear to the appeals for the supply of information about the fate of the Missing. In violation of fundamental principles and declarations on human rights and in disregard of a host of special resolutions adopted by the United Nations and Europe, Turkey kept its cards closed on the issue, considering it a military secret and hiding behind the vague and unfounded allegation that it held no one and knew nothing of these people.

Our organisation welcomes this development [the work of the CMP], which it considers a positive step in the right direction.

However, parallel work should start on the substantial investigation of each missing person's case. It would greatly help towards this end if those who hold information and data, such as the Turkish army, which is known to have in its possession reports about the hostilities and events in Cyprus during 1974, made them available to U.N. bodies and to the International Red Cross, so that at long last the fate of every missing person and of all the missing persons in Cyprus, whether Greek Cypriot or Turkish Cypriot, will be fully ascertained.’

47_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Source C Attila ’74: The Rape of Cyprus (documentary film by Michalis Kakoyannis, 1975) The film can be found on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiYD8WeoLQE Play segment from 1:18:24 to 1:22:09.

Transcription of the film segment: Woman 1: When the Turks took Palekythron, they herded us together in the village school. They took the men away. We didn’t know where. They moved us to Voni. They separated us from the old men and locked us up with the children in the village school.

We spent two months there. I was so miserable, I got this rash on my arms and all over me. There we were enclaved, with no news from my husband. It was agony not knowing. And me with five children, suffering and worrying. Back in Palekythron the Turks killed 18 people. A cousin of mine and her two children. Another family with five children. Two of the children, Costaki and Petraki, got away and were brought to Voni. Now they are here, somewhere, in Nicosia.

Interviewer: What’s your name?

Child 1: Petraki.

Interviewer: What’s your name?

Child 2: Costaki.

Man: One day the village priest brought us the news that my sister, her husband and three of their five children had been killed.

The two boys who escaped as if by some miracle are Petraki, who is eleven, and Costaki, who is eight.

Child 1 (Petraki): My parents are dead, so are my two brothers and my sister.

Interviewer: How old were they?

Child 1 (Petraki): One brother was nine, the other four. The little girl was three.

Child 2 (Costaki): I saw my aunt who was wounded, and my uncle, an old man, who was also wounded.

Interviewer: Did you see anyone else?

Child 2 (Costaki): I didn’t.

Child 1 (Petraki): I saw mum and dad. They were lying there hurt, badly hurt. The little ones were lying in my aunt’s arms. My older brother was near me.

Interviewer: Were you wounded?

Child 1 (Petraki): Yes. I was wounded here.

Child 2 (Costaki): We had two doors, one front and one back. They carried them out through one and I left.

Interviewer: All by yourself?

Child 2 (Costaki): Yes, I left through the back door.

Woman’s voice: Psychologically they feel it’s all a lie and they’ll return to the village and find their parents and family alive. Gradually they’re coming to realise perhaps their drama is only just beginning.

Woman 1: What can any of us do? God have mercy on us and people everywhere.

48_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Source D Digging for a Future (documentary film by the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, 2010) A copy of the film with Turkish and Greek subtitles is provided in the Resources section of this pack.

The film can also be found on this link: http://www.cmpcyprus.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=1495&tt=graphic&lang=l1 Play the following segments: 12:42 – 13:30 Transcription of the film segment: Maria Georgiou (Daughter of Missing Person. Featured together with Mr. Elias Georgiades, Greek Cypriot Member of the CMP, speaking in Greek): ‘There is great pain in having a missing person, but someone who doesn’t have one can never understand it. Because we have one, we know the pain. Now that he was found, we feel great relief. It is different now... we used to believe that he was alive.

Everybody, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, we all believe that they are alive, and that one day they will return. Regardless of their age, or whether there was a war or not. Each person expects their relative to return one day alive. We know now that he has a grave and a tombstone. We can go everyday and light a candle. We go to clean up and water the flowers... We know that our father is there now.

Question: Do you ever talk to him?

Yes, I do.

Question: What do you say to him?

I just talk to him, a lot.’

49_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 3: Why have different responses to Cyprus’ missing persons problem emerged over time?

Materials for Unit 3 - Activity 2 Group 2: Association of Martyrs’ Families and War Veterans The organisation was formed by Turkish Cypriots with relatives affected by the conflict. It was established in 1975.

Source A Introduction from the website of the Association of Martyrs’ Families and War Veterans ‘Where you are now resting is very beautiful, we are aware that not everybody has the honour of being in a war grave but it is too difficult to withstand your absence. You are in the dreams of your parents, your spouses and your children. They are hugging you but when they wake up, only tears remain. We have overcome the obstacles of human factor but haven’t been able to overcome the obstacles of fate. We are addressing those of you, the spouses, children and parents of our martyrs who remained from our friends at the palm of martyrdom and who are entrusted to us. We are going to be stronger by the support our government gives us and you can contribute by being a member of our association.’

Source B Excerpt from Turkish Cypriot Information Office, 11 June 2002 ‘Ertan Ersan, the President, addressing Mr Alvaro De Soto, claimed that politics has dominated the issue of the missing persons and progression of the efforts of CMP are hindered and the issue should be evaluated from the perspectives of the rights of the families who wish to obtain definite information.

The President of the Association also claimed that the association has been putting continuous effort into the issue in that they are trying to obtain information related to the fate of the 500 missing persons and Greek Cypriots display no interest in missing persons before 1974. He also declared his hope in CMP, which was founded in 1981.’

Source C Excerpt from Başaran Press, 23 August 2009 ‘Ertan Ersan claimed that it is of utmost importance for the martyrs to be found and buried for the families so that they can visit their lost ones. He thanked CMP for their efforts and wished that’ ‘I pray to God that we will never have to live through what we have lived already.’’

Source D Excerpt from Kibris Newspaper, 17 June 2010 ‘He [Ertan Ersan] continued that he wants to share the information with the public, and there were 250 missing persons from the Turkish Cypriot community against 42 Greek Cypriots in the 1963-1964 period. The Greek government has never registered these missing persons and made it available to the international community. They pretend that they do not have any missing persons and Greek Cypriots are hiding the facts.’

50_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Source D Voice of Blood (documentary film by Tony Angastiniotis, 2004) The film can be found on this link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6069441414391519024 Play the following segment from the film: 8:19 - 10:31 Transcription of the film segment: Turkish Cypriot man: ‘When the second operation started on 14 August, they took us to the area of Derinya in trucks. We stayed there until noon. In the afternoon, they put us into trucks and took us to Larnaca. At one point they dropped us off, because the English didn’t allow armed Greek Cypriots from going into the bases. They kept us there into the middle of the night. Then they put us into trucks and took us to the Larnaca plains. We could see that there was nobody else there. Then a military personnel came who opposed us being there. We went towards Limasol. We spent the night in the mountains. In the morning they took us to a school. Because there was no food, someone brought a bag of potatoes. We cleaned the potatoes and put them in an oven.

News came that the Turkish army was nearby. An order was given to take us someplace else. I was married and had three children.

My eldest child was three years old, my second child was two years old, and the youngest one was only 16 days old. When we went back to our village, we couldn’t find anyone. Not my mother, not my brother, not my wife, not my children. We learned that they were killed by Greek Cypriots. The only message I want to give is this: I am happy with the situation today. They are where they are, we are where we are.’

Source D Digging for a Future (documentary film by the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, 2010) A copy of the film with Turkish and Greek subtitles is provided in the Resources section of this pack.

The film can also be found on this link: http://www.cmpcyprus.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=1495&tt=graphic&lang=l1 Play the following segment from the film: 11:20 – 12:02 Transcription of the film segment: Mesut Akak (Son of a Missing Person, speaking in Turkish. Featured together with Ms. Gülden Plümer Küçük, Turkish Cypriot member of the CMP.): ‘Until 1974, we knew that our father was missing. After 1974, when the war broke out, and the soldiers came here and conquered some land, we thought that the missing persons were found and would be coming back home. We were in an expectation that our father was a POW [prisoner of war] and he would return. We kept all my father’s clothes, trousers and shirts, all those ten years, as if he would return one day. Can you imagine that all the clothes of a father were kept in a cupboard until 1975-1976, as if he would return one day. After the operation of 1974, everyone was in an expectation that the missing would return and reunite.

Denktaş (Turkish Cypriot leader) told later that the families of the missing should not expect their return, because they were all dead.’

51_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 3: Why have different responses to Cyprus’ missing persons problem emerged over time?

Materials for Unit 3 - Activity 2 Group 3: Bi-communal Initiative of Relatives of Missing Persons, Victims of Massacres and Other Victims of 1963-1974 Events The organisation was formed by both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot relatives of missing persons and victims of the events of 1963-1974.

Source A The Common Pain A Catalyst for Peace and Reconciliation (extracts from a presentation by the Bi-communal Initiative of Relatives of Missing Persons, Victims of Massacres and Other Victims of 1963-1974 Events) ‘This Initiative brings together Turkish and Greek Cypriots, relatives of missing persons, victims of massacres and other victims of the events of 50 years of inter-communal violence.

Common platform of dialogue and action, to raise public awareness regarding the events surrounding this violence and work towards minimizing the exploitation of the common suffering to promote nationalism.

[Aims to:] Create opportunities for relatives of Victims to come together and share experiences Share information towards tracing out potential burial sites Organise events aiming at creating public awareness of the bi-communal aspect of War Crimes in Cyprus For the wounds to heal, one ... ...Needs to have the remains of his loved ones to bury ...Needs to know what happened, needs a sense of justice to prevail.’

Source B Notes on Truth and Reconciliation (extract from a document provided by the Initiative) ‘The families of the victims are not generally satisfied with simply being handed over the remains of their loved ones. They seek information about the circumstances surrounding the killing. A full investigation is generally being asked for. Even though a process of healing seems to be commencing following the burials, the whole issue still remains open since the events leading to the killings are not properly investigated. Therefore, proper healing cannot occur and that still keeps the whole society being unaware about the true events surrounding the conflict. This situation cannot help reconciliation.’

Source C Intervention by Hüseyin Akansoy, a member of the Initiative, during an event in Brussels organised by Euro MPs ‘As somebody who has lost almost all his immediate and greater family in one of the most atrocious massacres in 1974, I have come to realise that the only way to get over the loss and carry on with my life, is to work as hard as I can for peace, to make sure no other family will go through the terrible ordeal I have experienced.

Since day one, the issue of the missing was quite correctly classified as a humanitarian issue and as such an issue requiring immediate action. After 46 years one can safely conclude that the issue was never given first priority [by the authorities]. For our bi-communal group there can be no calculations there can be no discrimination as to the nationality of the people buried in a mass grave. There are known burial sites and there can be no excuses as to the immediate need to open up these graves. After 46 years we can at least now start treating the issue as a humanitarian one.’

52_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Source D Cyprus: Digging the Past in Search of the Future (documentary film by The Elders, 2011) A copy of the film with Turkish and Greek subtitles is provided in the Resources section of this pack.

The film can also be found on this link: http://vimeo.com/theelders/cyprus-digging-the-past-in-search-of-the-future Play the following segments from the film: Segment 1, 25:00 – 29:17 Segment 2, 30:49 - 31:03 Segment 3, 31:28 – 32:35 Segment 1 transcript (25:00 – 29:17) Desmond Tutu (from The Elders): ‘You are?’

Veli Beidoğlu (Son of Missing Person Ertuğrul Veli): ‘Veli Beidoğlu.’

Desmond Tutu (from The Elders): ‘Veli.’

Spyros Hadjinicolaou (Son of Missing Person Christos Hadjinicolaou): ‘Spyros. A pleasure.’

Desmond Tutu (from The Elders): ‘How are you?’

Thalia Ioannidou (Cypriot student): ‘It was just like the conclusion, how two people - one Greek Cypriot and one Turkish Cypriot were sitting next to each other and were talking about their fathers' deaths. And they were OK with it.’

Veli Beidoğlu (Son of Missing Person Ertuğrul Veli): ‘He was a manager of the Barclays Bank branch in Varosha, and he basically was...from all accounts... We've never had an official account of what happened so we don't know what happened exactly and how it happened. But in May of 1964, it was after the 1963 troubles, and after the Turks and Greek Cypriots moved away in their own enclaves. There were attacks on Turkish Cypriots – civilians – who were working in the predominantly Greek Cypriot areas.

My father was one of those people. We know that people came to the bank and they took him from there, and basically, he disappeared. And we haven't heard from him. Obviously, over the years, there were...through personal relations, we found out what happened to him unofficially. So we had absolutely no expectation that he was alive and would return one day.

So we knew this information in the '60s. The biggest revelation was when I got a phone call saying that his burial place had been located. And all of a sudden, they were moving in to exhume the bodies because apparently somebody was going to build some holiday home because it's a seaside resort in Ayia Napa, so the CMP, you know, did the exhumation. It was a very emotional moment, ‘It is actually happening.’ Because I never thought in my lifetime that I was actually going to be in that position of recovering my... Because there was so much... It was an impossible thing that one day when I was growing up, it would happen.

Because all forces were against it. Nobody wanted this thing to come to... you know, to come out, in the open. Everybody was trying to, kind of, keep it under, on both sides, because they didn't want to own up to their responsibilities, and they were both, you know, at fault.’

Spyros Hadjinicolaou (Son of Missing Person Christos Hadjinicolaou): ‘My father was a civilian. He was a judge. During the second phase of the invasion of the Turkish army in Cyprus, we got, sort of, isolated in the peninsula of Karpasia as the Turkish troops were marching down. From what I have gathered, I know that the International Association of Judges managed to talk to, at the time, the Prime Minister of Turkey, Ecevit, who sent a message to the Turkish Cypriot leader at the time, Denktaş. And he got the reply, ‘I'm afraid that we've lost the judge’, which meant he was killed by the local militia. So that was the first official, let's say,

53_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

information that we had - an admission that my father was executed.

Of course, year after year, we were receiving information, some not factually based, some factually based, but after some years, we realised that there was no chance of him being alive. Cyprus is a small place, even if there was a divide at the time. There were strong feelings, as far as we knew from the Turkish Cypriots at the time - especially from the militia – against the Greek Cypriots of the area. It was, actually, probably, a very local thing that had happened - a very local act of revenge.’

Veli Beidoğlu (Son of Missing Person Ertuğrul Veli): ‘And coming here and seeing it, it was like looking at the bones, and, you know, the remains with the holes here and there. It was very emotional.’

Spyros Hadjinicolaou (Son of Missing Person Christos Hadjinicolaou): ‘And, also, I got quite angry about the whole situation. I mean, it's something that personally, I still cannot process because it's murder.’

Segment 2 transcript (30:49-31:03) Spyros Hadjinicolaou (Son of Missing Person Christos Hadjinicolaou): ‘I must say, it felt like it closed a whole period of mixed emotions and huge stress and bitterness. And I hope the rest of the missing persons' families can be as lucky as, if I may say so, as we are, in our, let's say, unluckiness.’

Segment 3 transcript (31:28 – 32:35) Idil Cazimoğlu (Cypriot student): ‘Do you think if families who share the same stories from both sides were made to come together, do you think it would relieve the atmosphere, or would it make it even worse?’

Veli Beidoğlu (Son of Missing Person Ertuğrul Veli): ‘I think, there are... Not all families, not all relatives, are like Spyros and I, so I think we are probably a minority, I would say. I think there is a great majority of people who have lost family members who are still feeling a lot of animosity towards each other. Let's not paint a very, you know, rosy picture here, you know? We're an initiative and we are moving forward. We're an NGO and we're coming together, but I would say that we are probably a minority and there are a lot of people who will not even look at each other. I think that trusting is the key here, so trust helps the unification process and the reconciliation, but how do you get that trust if people are not talking to each other? That's the challenge.’

Jimmy Carter of The Elders with Veli Beidoğlu and Spyros Hadjinicolaou during the filming of Cyprus: Digging the Past in Search of a Future.

Photographs courtesy of Jeff Moore/The Elders.

54_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 3: Why have different responses to Cyprus’ missing persons problem emerged over time?

Materials for Unit 3 - Activity 2 Group 4: The Elders An independent group of former world leaders. It was established in 2007.

Source A About The Elders ‘The Elders are an independent group of global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela in 2007, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace-building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. The Elders amplify the voices of those who work hard to be heard, challenge injustice, stimulate dialogue and debate and help others to work for positive change in their societies. The Elders do not hold public office and have no political or legislative power. Because they are not bound by the interests of any single nation, government or institution, they are free to speak boldly and with whomever they choose on any issue, and to take any action that they believe is right. When undertaking initiatives, the Elders are committed to listening to the views of all groups and individuals – and especially women and young people.

The Elders are Martti Ahtisaari, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Lakhdar Brahimi, Gro Brundtland, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Jimmy Carter, Graça Machel, Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu (Chair). Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi are honorary Elders.’

Learn more at: http://www.theelders.org/elders

Source B The Elders’ work for Cyprus (background information from the website of The Elders) ‘The island of Cyprus has been divided into two communities – Greek Cypriot in the south and Turkish Cypriot in the north – for more than three decades, following inter-communal violence and conflict during the 1960s and 1970s.

Over the decades, repeated attempts have been made to bring the two communities back together again, address the past and reunite the divided island. The leaders of the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities have engaged periodically in UNbrokered talks to try to find a comprehensive settlement. Only through dialogue, trust-building and cooperation between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots will lasting peace be possible.

The Elders support all efforts to build peace, enhance trust and strengthen dialogue between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.

They stand ready to use their experience and influence to help the parties bring the peace negotiations to a successful conclusion.

The Elders began working on Cyprus in September 2008, when the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities formally entered into peace negotiations. Since then, they have visited the island four times to support the talks by sharing their experiences with leaders and encouraging dialogue.

In addition to discussing the negotiations with decision-makers, The Elders support and amplify the work of Cypriots involved in peace-building initiatives. They worked with the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus and the Cyprus Friendship Programme to film a documentary about the search for missing persons in Cyprus. They hope the film, Digging the Past in Search of the Future, will help Cypriots come to a common understanding about their shared past - and can continue, in a small way, to building a peaceful future.’

Learn more at: http://www.theelders.org/cyprus

55_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Source C Cyprus's Last and Best Chance (extract from an article by Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and Lakhdar Brahimi) ‘An overwhelming majority of Cypriots are unhappy with the status quo, believe a settlement is possible and reject any return to violence, but are deeply distrustful of each other and of the peace process. They have seen too many previous efforts fail. A culture of cynicism and complacency seems to be the default position, especially among politicians and the media.

Opening up the debate about what peace could look like would help. When we visited Cyprus late last year, we noticed how few women and young people were engaged in politics. Old men (like us) dominate public debate, and we strongly urge Cyprus’s leaders to make more space for those whose voices are not so readily heard.

Second, strengthening links between the two communities is essential. The island has been split for so long that generations have grown up with no idea of life on the other side. It is very difficult for schools, law enforcement agencies, soccer clubs and telephone, electricity and water companies to cooperate across the Green Line. Teenagers can’t even send text messages across the divide. Trade between the communities is limited.

Lowering these barriers with respect and sensitivity would help to heal the wounds of the past and, importantly, to build trust.’

The full text of the article can be found on this link: http://www.theelders.org/article/cypruss-last-and-best-chance

Source D Peace Can Never be Perfect (blog post by Lakhdar Brahimi) ‘Many Cypriots still feel anger, resentment and mistrust. That is an inevitable result of warfare and these are understandable sentiments. But I do know that people can come to some kind of peace – and start to live together, even after such pain. I have seen that in Algeria, my home country. I have seen it in South Africa, where I worked to monitor the country’s first multiracial elections in 1994. And I have seen it in Lebanon.’

The full text of the blog post can be found on this link: www.theelders.org/article/peace-can-never-be-perfect

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (above) and Dr. Gro Brundtland (below) attend a workshop with Cypriot young people and educators, February 2011. Photographs courtesy of David Hands/The Elders.

56_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Source E Why Cyprus? (blog post by Jimmy Carter) ‘While I was in Cyprus many people asked me ‘Why have The Elders come here three times?’ ‘Why do you think we can achieve peace now when we haven't done before?’

My answer is this: I think the situation now is very different from what I have known in the past, and represents possibly the best opportunity we have seen for a solution.

When I was elected President in 1976, the unity of Cyprus and peace on the island was near the top of my priorities. We tried to negotiate but at that time the negative influence from outside, and especially from Greece and Turkey, meant that the people of Cyprus had very little to say about what would happen.

In 2004 a proposal for reunification was made that was rejected by the Greek Cypriots. The UN was criticised for influencing the process too much as opposed to playing its primary role of facilitator and Cypriot citizens were not sufficiently involved in the final proposal.

The situation faced by Cypriots today is different. For the first time in history, they and their elected leaders will decide their own future.’

The full text of the blog post can be found on this link: http://www.theelders.org/article/why-cyprus

Source F Desmond Tutu on Cyprus (extracts from an interview) ‘And you shouldn’t beat yourselves up for being angry. You cannot control your feelings, but what you can control is what you can do with your feelings. What are you going to do with the thing that provoked those feelings. And I think it isn’t fair to expect a mother who has seen her child killed brutally, to say, ‘it doesn’t matter’. Because what kind of a mother would not be bitter and angry? Bitterness is natural. But then you say, by the way, there are other mothers from the other side who have had the same experience as I have had. I don’t know if you have heard of a thing called 'The Parents' Circle' in Israel and Palestine. I mean, look at that! It would be something you think it could never have happened. But there are two people in conflict who have bereavement in their families. And instead of that bereavement separating them, they say we have had a common experience, let us come together, to comfort one another, but even more, to prevent situations happening that will make other mothers and fathers mourn as we are mourning.

In South Africa, we discovered - it's something we copied from Chile and Argentina, we learnt from them and made small improvements - that it is important to face up to the past for people to be able to acknowledge that terrible things happened.

People always need to know who ordered those things to happen. What happened to my loved ones? Have they just disappeared?

Were they abducted? And I‘ve said, there is really no future without forgiveness. And forgiveness looks back and it looks forward.’

The full text of the interview can be found on this link: http://www.theelders.org/article/interview-desmond-tutu-cyprus

57_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Source G Cyprus: Digging the Past in Search of the Future (documentary film by The Elders, 2011) A copy of the film with Turkish and Greek subtitles is provided in the Resources section of this pack.

The film can also be found on this link: http://vimeo.com/theelders/cyprus-digging-the-past-in-search-of-the-future Play the following segments from the film: Segment 1, 5:05 – 5:35 Segment 2, 5:54 – 7:09 Segment 3, 10:21 - 12:57 Segment 4, 13:31 – 14:29 Segment 5, 19:13 – 19:37 Segment 6, 29:19 - 29:47 Segment 7, 31:04 – 31:20 Segment 1 transcript (5:05 – 5:35) Desmond Tutu (from The Elders): Almost everywhere in the world when somebody has been killed and buried or disappeared...

I mean, in Argentina, Chile... They all have the same longing, ‘What happened to our loved ones?’ All of them want to know. In Northern Ireland, even now, the cry is, ‘What happened?’

Segment 2 transcript (5:54 – 7:09) Michael Panayi (Cypriot teenager): ‘My family... they had 16 missing people.’

Lakhdar Brahimi (from The Elders): ‘16, 1-6’ Michael Panayi (Cypriot teenager): ‘And 15 of them were found dead, and one of them is still missing, and they went through a lot of atrocities in the war. And I wanted to ask you, how do people get over that?’

Lakhdar Brahimi (from The Elders): ‘Well, I think you've got to ask yourself questions. What are the options that are offered to you? In Gaza, there was a doctor...a Palestinian doctor, who was working for Israeli television, and the Israelis killed his family.

So, of course, he was very angry and so on, but then, you know, he said...’If we go on like this, what will happen? Other people will lose their families. That's what will happen.”

Segment 3 transcript (10:21 - 12:57) Desmond Tutu (from The Elders): ‘There's a type of healing which makes most, I think, in my experience, most feel a kind of compassion for the others. There may be some who will say, ‘Well, we want revenge,’ but most people are remarkable, actually.’

Lakhdar Brahimi (from The Elders): ‘Immediately after your son or husband or brother or sister disappears, of course, you are hopeful that they will be alive. And if you think that they are dead, perhaps the feeling of revenge is more common than the feeling of forgiveness. And, you know, you don't need to either forget or even forgive. You know, somebody who has killed my son - I would not forgive him or her. But I think that with time, I realise that the way to honour and remember my child is not by killing other kids. Yet, I will not forget, I will not forgive, but I will not kill any more. See?’ Desmond Tutu (from The Elders): ‘I'm not sure, my dear. I would also want to take issue with you on saying, ‘I will not forgive.’

Almost all of the people that we encountered in our Truth and Reconciliation Commission were amazing. And, I think, at the moment, what you're saying is cerebral. Not forgetting is quite crucial because you are saying, ‘I will not forget.’ ‘Remembering

58_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

is important, actually, for the process of healing.’

Jimmy Carter (from The Elders): ‘So I think the main purpose of this exhumation and identification of the lost ones is a matter of resolving the past as best we can, but primarily building on the future so the Turks and Greeks both realise that here in Cyprus, we lost loved ones. The suffering was equal on both sides. Both sides are to blame. That's coming out of this whole process, and now, what do we do with this knowledge? We build for peace in the future.’

Segment 4 transcript (13:31 – 14:29) Desmond Tutu (from The Elders): ‘One of the things is that when you look at the world, in those situations where people engage in revenge... For one thing, the revenge does not...restore the situation that was there before. I mean, it doesn't restore your son, and the thing that happens... When you look at Israel and Palestine... You have a suicide bomber go into Israel. You know that there's going to be a reprisal against the Palestinians, but as sure as anything, you know, too, that somewhere along the line, the Palestinians are going to do something again. And so you have this spiral that just goes on and on and on.’

Segment 5 transcript (19:13 – 19:37) Jimmy Carter (from The Elders): ‘And this exhumation that you're undertaking with great patience and tenacity is a very important opportunity for both Greek and Turkish Cypriots to realise that both sides suffered horribly. And now is a time not for looking back with anger and animosity and hatred, but for looking forward with friendship.’

Segment 6 transcript (29:19 - 29:47) Lakhdar Brahimi (from The Elders): “Why? Why was my father killed?’ It is quite all right to continue to be angry because your father was killed because that was wrong, and it doesn't stop being wrong. So the fact that you are going to reconcile does not stop the fact. You don't have to change that feeling that killing my father was wrong and the people who have done it are criminals.’

Segment 7 transcript (31:04 – 31:20) Lakhdar Brahimi (from The Elders): ‘But there is something else at stake. A lot of things have happened. Now, we have got to make sure that this does not happen again on our island. And for that, we have got to move on.’

Elders Jimmy Carter, Lakhdar Brahimi and Desmond Tutu with Cypriot teenagers during the filming of Cyprus: Digging the Past in Search of a Future.

Photographs courtesy of Jeff Moore/The Elders.

59_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 3: Why have different responses to Cyprus’ missing persons problem emerged over time?

Materials for Unit 3 - Activity 3

Degree of Importance

Graph to map the emergence and fluctuation in importance of aims, beliefs and motivations of each group over time

Timeline of Events

60_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 4: History and memory Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(a) Approaching the past in different ways: monuments and monumentality What is it? What is it for? How is it made? What did the people who made it want us to think and feel about the people or issue it represents?

The Victoria Memorial, Lancaster (England) http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-383140-queen-victoria-memorial-lancaster http://www.britarch.ac.uk/lahs/tour/dalton.htm This monument was erected shortly after the death of Queen Victoria and is typical of the large number of monuments to the queen’s reign that were constructed at this time. It is a contemporary monument that clearly aims to celebrate the Victorian era as an era of national greatness.

Victoria stands with a commanding expression, holding the symbols of power, on the top of a pedestal raised on a plinth that is supported, at the four corners, by idealised representations of women symbolising Wisdom, Truth, Liberty and Justice and that features bas relief panels on each of the four sides of the monument depicting ‘great’ people, overwhelmingly men, who flourished during her reign and who are represented as contributing to its ‘greatness’. The men include judges, poets, generals, scientists, politicians, and so on.

The Victoria Memorial in Lancaster, UK. Photographs courtesy of Arthur Chapman.

61_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 4: History and memory Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(a) Approaching the past in different ways: monuments and monumentality What is it? What is it for? How is it made? What did the people who made it want us to think and feel about the people or issue it represents?

The Slave Trade Arts Memorial Project (STAMP) ‘Captured Africans’ Memorial, Lancaster (England) http://www.uclan.ac.uk/schools/journalism_media_communication/literature_culture/abolition/stamp.php The STAMP Memorial was constructed nearly two centuries after the formal abolition of the slave trade, whose victims it memorialises (the trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807 and had flourished in the port of Lancaster in the second half of the eighteenth century). The STAMP Memorial commemorates the victims of exploitation and indicts the trade that exploited them and it is located near to the quay in Lancaster where ships engaged in the ‘Africa trade’ would dock. The plight of ‘Captured Africans’ is represented on the Memorial as the 'base' of a structure of trade and commerce that is also represented on the memorial and the city’s role in this trade is recorded in a list of ships sailing from Lancaster in the ‘Africa trade’ on one side of the monument. The STAMP memorial expresses a counter-history, commemorates a group of people ‘hidden’ in the older ‘official’ narrative and draws attention to the suffering of the victims of ‘empire’.

The Slave Trade Arts Memorial Project (STAMP) 'Captured Africans' memorial in Lancaster, UK. Photographs courtesy of Arthur Chapman.

62_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 4: History and memory Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(a) Approaching the past in different ways: monuments and monumentality What is it? What is it for? How is it made? What did the people who made it want us to think and feel about the people or issue it represents?

Memorials to the victims of Nazism: Sachenhausen Memorial http://www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/index.htm http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/GALLFR/sach12.HTM This memorial was constructed in the early 1960s by the East German communist regime and it is typical of the ways in which the regime represented the victims of Nazism. These victims are presented in political terms (as the website notes, only ‘red triangles’, denoting communist prisoners in the camp, are recorded on the monument). The statue commemorating these ‘victims’ in front of the monument does not emphasise their suffering but instead, through its title (Liberation) and its design, it celebrates, instead, the role of the Red Army in defeating Nazism and ‘rescuing’ camp inmates from Nazi oppression. An idealised Red Army soldier is at the centre of the group and he envelopes the two ‘liberated’ prisoners with his hands and cape, taking them under communist ‘protection’.

The Sachenhausen Memorial in Germany. Photographs courtesy of Arthur Chapman.

63_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 4: History and memory Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(a) Approaching the past in different ways: monuments and monumentality What is it? What is it for? How is it made? What did the people who made it want us to think and feel about the people or issue it represents?

Memorials to the victims of Nazism: The Documentation Centre, Nazi Party Congress Hall, Nuremberg (Germany) http://museums.nuremberg.de/documentation-centre The Nazi Party Congress Hall symbolises many key features of the Nazi regime: in its design, which echoes the Coliseum in Rome, it expresses imperial ambition and the regime’s propaganda strategies; its state of incompletion points to the consequences of the war that the Nazis provoked; its material structure (stone quarried by concentration camp slave labourers) embodies the brutality of the Nazi regime.

The Documentation Centre that opened at the site in 2001 represents a negative form of monumentality: the construction of the documentation centre shoots an ‘arrow’ of ‘light’, into the building, puncturing the symmetry of the Nazi architecture. Inside the glass and steel arrow is a documentation centre in which the appeal of the Nazis, their crimes and the eventual outcomes of their rule are represented through museum displays.

The Documentation Centre, Nazi Party Congress Hall in Nuremberg, Germany. Photographs courtesy of Arthur Chapman.

64_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 4: History and memory Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(a) Approaching the past in different ways: monuments and monumentality What is it? What is it for? How is it made? What did the people who made it want us to think and feel about the people or issue it represents?

Memorials to the victims of Nazism: Stumbling Stones, Cologne (Germany) http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/germany_insideout/rhineland3.shtml http://www.ww2museums.com/article/1367/Stumbling-Stones-Berlin.htm The Stumbling Stones (Stolpersteine) aim to draw attention to individual victims of Nazism and to make their memory literally present in the streets that they were torn away from by the Nazi regime. The stones are literally in the street and they record the names of individuals and the stark outline of what the Nazis did to them. There is no overt symbolisation, no attempt to interpret the fate of victims and no attempt to draw conclusions from the fact of their victimhood for the present: the bare facts of past atrocity and persecution are simply made present in everyday life literally ‘underfoot’.

Stumbling Stones in Cologne, Germany. Photograph courtesy of Karin Richert.

65_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 4: History and memory Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(b) Monuments to the missing: how have missing people been represented and memorialised in monuments?

Who / What is memorialised by the monument?

Who is doing the memorialising?

What can we conclude from the memorial about the intentions of the people who constructed these monuments?

Case studies from Bosnia Herzegovina: Memorial to Bosniak Victims of Atrocity, Kozarac (near Prijedor, in Republika Srpska - BiH) http://iwpr.net/report-news/calls-war-memorials-divide-bosnia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2-MSIGpN7g&feature=related

Kozarac Memorial in Republika Srpska, BiH. Photograph courtesy of Sandra Ullen/Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

66_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

This monument, erected in July 2010, commemorates the Bosniak victims of ‘ethnic cleansing’ carried out by Bosnian Serb forces in Kozarac after they captured the town in May 1992. The monument consists of a stone enclosure dedicated ‘To the Innocent Killed Citizens of Kozarac, 19921995’ and contains an inscription by the Bosniak poet Mehmedalija ‘Mak’ Dizdar (1917-1971): One does not live here in order to live One does not live here in order to die One also dies here in order to live On the inward-facing side of the blocks of stone that make up the enclosure are inscribed the names of the 1,226 Bosniak victims of atrocity in Kozarac. Each block is up-lit at night and each features a small memorial fountain at its base. Electric ‘candles’ that are illuminated at night, whose design mirrors barbs of barbed wire, are embedded in the outward facing sides of the stone blocks, one for each of the victims. The blocks are smooth on their inward faces and rough-hewn on their outward faces.

Some context for the monument is provided by Irwin and Šarić: The victims’ groups say they are eager to create memorials on the grounds of... camps in what is now the Serbian part of Bosnia, Republika Srpska... but have so far been unsuccessful. In most cases, they say they have been denied access to these places by local Bosnian Serb officials, or have to ask permission even to visit.....

Memorial plaques or monuments are sometimes permitted, but in places ‘hidden away from the public eye, in villages where returnees live, or religious memorials at the cemeteries where the victims are’, Hodzic said.

One example of a larger Bosniak memorial is in the town of Kozarac, near Prijedor, which was almost entirely Bosniak before it was captured by Bosnian Serb forces on May 24, 1992. After that, non-Serb inhabitants were either killed or expelled, and their houses destroyed.

Today, Kozarac is once again mostly Bosniak because of an influx of returnees to the area, and the memorial to the town’s war victims opened in July of this year...

The memorial was the result of ‘a lot of lobbying’, explained Mujagic, who grew up in Kozarac.

‘It’s all politics,’ he said. ‘Kozarac was also already a small enclave... 95 percent of the population there is Bosniak, so probably the Serb authorities don’t care so much. In a way, it is a monument for Bosniaks, in ‘their own town’.

Todorovic believes that the local authorities felt pressured ‘to allow at least one memorial’.

‘Kozarac, due to the demographic structure, was probably the smallest risk,’ he said.

In addition, the Kozarac monument does not include any educational components, which tend to provoke the most opposition.

Each side is intent on avoiding anything which might contradict the main narrative of war upon which they rely, observers say.

67_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 4: History and memory Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(b) Monuments to the missing: how have missing people been represented and memorialised in monuments?

Who / What is memorialised by the monument?

Who is doing the memorialising?

What can we conclude from the memorial about the intentions of the people who constructed these monuments?

Case studies from Bosnia Herzegovina: The Srebrenica-PotoÄ?ari Memorial and Cemetery http://memoryandjustice.org/site/srebrenica-potochari-memorial-and-cemetery/ http://www.potocarimc.ba

The Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial and Cemetery in BiH. Photograph courtesy of Azir OsmanaviÄ? /Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Centre.

68_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

The Memory and Justice website summarises events at Srebrenica as follows: In July 1995, the worst massacre in Europe since World War II took place in the Bosnian silver-mining community of Srebrenica.

The civilian Muslim community at Srebrenica, fearing ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serbs, fled their homes and sought refuge at the nearby UN base of Potočari. But Serbs forces were allowed to enter the refugee camps, where they systematically separated all of the men from the women and children. The women and children were bused away to safety in Tuzla, while the men were divided into groups, forced to dig mass graves, and then massacred.

The Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery was inaugurated in 2003 and former US President Bill Clinton officially opened the site. Information about the process that led to the creation of the memorial, and the role in this of relatives of the victims, and of the United Nations, can be found on the Memory and Justice website. Whilst it is unlikely that the site would exist without the support and funding of the international community, pressure for its creation arose from the relatives of the victims who, for example, insisted that the memorial be located at the site of the former UN base at Potočari and who were closely consulted in the design of the memorial.

The Memory and Justice website summarises the design of the site as follows: The memorial has two parts, divided by a road. On one side of the road is the cemetery, which is shaped like the petals of a flower.

On the other side is the Srebrenica Memorial Room, a building that was a battery factory in the 1980s and the headquarters of the Dutch UN battalion in the 1990s.....

The... Memorial Room... consists of two black towers: one presenting a film on the massacre, and the other showcasing the stories and personal items of twenty victims. ‘The tops of the towers are closed, evoking a sense of loss, the darkened spaces seeming like voids from which the narratives of July 1995 descend,’ wrote the members of :arch [who designed the memorial]... Each year, additional victims are identified and reburied. The cemetery will not assume its final look until authorities and families are satisfied that all possible victims have been buried.

A description and architectural plan of the cemetery and memorial produced by the architects who designed it can be accessed at the Archnet website (http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=16709). ArchNet summarise the cemetery memorial design as follows: The focal point is a semicircular memorial plateau or ‘musale’ where religious ceremonies for up to 1,000 people can be performed.

Enclosing the musale, a horseshoe of inclined granite slabs bears the names of the 10,000 victims. The musale also features a covered area, mihrab, minbar, ablution facilities and fountain. The surrounding land is divided into eight petal-shaped parcels, defined by granite footpaths. Here, white tombstones are gradually appearing as the victims are identified.

The atrocities at Srebrenica differed from those at Kozarac in a large number of ways, not least in the direct involvement of the international community in the events leading up to the massacre at Srebrenica (through, for example, the actions and inactions of the UN peacekeepers at the time). The memorials differ also, for example in the involvement of high profile international figures and organisations in sponsoring, funding and supporting the development of the Srebrenica memorial site. Both memorials are still, nevertheless, bound up in contemporary politics: In 2005, two days before the ceremony for the 10th anniversary of the massacre, Bosnian police found and successfully defused two large bombs that had been planted at the memorial.

69_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Unit 4: History and memory Materials for Unit 4 - Component 4(b) Monuments to the missing: how have missing people been represented and memorialised in monuments?

Who / What is memorialised by the monument?

Who is doing the memorialising?

What can we conclude from the memorial about the intentions of the people who constructed these monuments?

Case studies from Bosnia Herzegovina: The Bruce Lee Statue in Mostar’s Spanish Square

Bruce Lee Statue in Mostar, BiH. Photographs courtesy of Branimir Prijak/relations and Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art.

70_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities

Bruce Lee, a martial arts film star who died of a swelling of the brain in 1973 at the age of 32, was memorialised in 2005 by the erection of a 1.68 metre statue depicting the actor in a ‘in a typical defensive fighting position’ in Spanish Square Mostar, a scene of bitter ethnic fighting during the Bosnia civil war. The statue was erected by the youth group, Urban Movement Mostar with financial support from the German government.

‘Out of all the ethnic heroes and those who have a material interest in acting as victims, we have chosen Bruce Lee,’ said Veselin Gatalo... For Urban Movement, putting up a statue of Bruce Lee in Bosnia may have been an irreverent gesture, but it wasn’t an absurdist one. The group chose Lee as their subject because watching his films was a truly shared and cherished experience for young Yugoslavs. ‘Now they can rack their brains trying to decide whether he is he Bosniak, Croat, or Serb,’ Gatalo said.

The Bruce Lee statue bears little apparent relationship to the history of Bosnia Herzegovina. Urban Movement Mostar clearly intended a relationship, however, by memorialising Bruce Lee, first, they looked for common ground between divided communities, and, second, by not memorialising an ethnic ‘hero’ they refused to fall back on the conventional political narratives that fuelled the Bosnian conflicts. The relationship between past and present that Urban Movement Mostar sought to create is symbolic rather than literal and explicitly future-oriented as much, and perhaps more than, past-oriented: as a BBC report puts it Mostar remains split with Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs still deeply divided. Lee was chosen by organisers as a symbol of the fight against ethnic divisions. ‘We will always be Muslims, Serbs or Croats,’ said Veselin Gatalo of the youth group Urban Movement Mostar. ‘But one thing we all have in common is Bruce Lee.’ Despite these intentions, the Bruce Lee statue is a failed monument: the statue has been removed from Spanish Square. As Memory and Justice report After repeated acts of vandalism, however, the statue was put in storage. As of 2007, it had not been displayed again.

71_Thinking Historically about Missing Persons: A Guide for Teachers – Sample Handouts for Educational Activities