A
page dedicated to the issue of the Missing People as
covered by the media.
Also, statements and comments by others supporting the
campaign.
The following article appeared in the Guardian
'Comment & Features' section on Tuesday April 15
2008.
Bones don't speak
For two years, the UN has been exhuming mass graves across Cyprus, reviving harrowing memories of the bloodshed in which 2,000 Greek and Turkish Cypriots disappeared without trace. Angelique Chrisafis explains how finding her uncle's remains after 34 years has helped her family - but also raised painful new questions about the fate of those still missing.
Laid out carefully on a
white sheet, limb by limb, rib by rib, knuckle by
knuckle, was the yellowed skeleton of Uncle Yiannos.
For 34 years he had been one of the disappeared, the
missing people whose haunting black-and-white photos
family members had carried round their necks at silent
demonstrations. Now the UN had dug up his bones from a
mass grave.
Laid out beside him were a few relics preserved by the
dry Cyprus soil: two buttons, pieces of his shoes and
socks, a belt buckle and his small pocket-knife for
cutting fruit. My cousin, Andis, picked up his skull
and cradled it, tracing his fingers around the bullet
holes. "One shot to the back of the head, one bullet
into the temple which exited the cheek," he
surmised.
Angelique Chrisafis at the site of the mass grave in Cyprus where the body of her uncle was found in September 2006
Read the full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/15/cyprus