Turkey: The Struggle of the Mothers of the Disappeared

[ozgurluk at xs4all.nl]

THE STRUGGLE OF THE MOTHERS AGAINST DARKNESS, THEIR PAIN RESEMBLES NO
OTHER PAIN

Their names could be Elif, maybe Ayse, maybe Hatice... It could be
Maria or Rosanne... Maybe Selvi or Bese... No matter what their names
are, their also known with another name and this one is the same
everywhere: mother. Yes, they're mothers... They have different
languages, different religions, but what they've gone through and what
they feel is the same... The feelings of a mother are love. The love
of a mother for her child is one of the strongest loves. Her child is
like a source of life. When the child feels a small pain, she feels it
in her hearth a thousand times more. The oppressors in several
countries have made the mothers feel another kind of pain during the
last decades. Their children are "disappearing".... It's impossible to
describe the pain these mothers feel. It's said that time heals all
pain, but for the mothers of the disappeared it is different. The pain
in their hearts darkens the days, it darkens the hours... The darkness
has become a blackness. Are they still alive? Their bodies have never
been found... "I want my son", "I want my daughter".

"They have made my child disappear! Bring it back! I want it back
alive, or at least give me the body".

Who knows, these words could have been repeated in all languages of
the world. In Chile, in Argentine, Columbia, Peru, all over the world.
Their faces, their eyes, they are always the same. There is always
some hope in their eyes, even though it isn't much. There is also
hate, incomparable hate. There is pain, like no other pain. It's not
easy to bear their looks. They are the same everywhere. Callous hands,
wrinkles faces, white headbands, sometimes red ones. Some wear red
flowers. They never give up. They ask everybody and everywhere for
their children. There is still some hope... The thought of "maybe I'll
find his body", although they don't want to think about that, keeps
them going. "Maybe I'll find his grave"... Otherwise they couldn't
bear the pain. They carried their children for months. They raised
them for years and one day they are fetched away. They are thrown in
deep well, in dark cellars... They can't breath anymore. A cry, a loud
cry, then the songs of sorrow, touching. Tears stream from their eyes,
unstoppable. Every drop flows over the wrinkles in the face, every
drop a drop of pain... The question "Why" comes up with great anger,
great hatred. It's wrong to compare this pain with the pain of loosing
a child, it's different. Hope is drawn from the smallest of signs. A
piece of clothing, a shoe, a shirt - maybe bloody -, a voice, a cry...
When the telephone rings, "maybe it's...". When someone knocks at the
door, "maybe someone brings news"...

The hope never disappears. Is it so easy to forget? Is it easy to
think they never existed? What heart could understand that? How can
one understand that? How can we ask them to forget? How can we ask
them it never happened? Still, there are those who expect them to do
so. The photos in their hands, the flowers in their clothing, the
white headbands are seen as a crime. They are beaten, dragged across
the floor, brought to torture chambers, maybe the same ones where
their sons, their daughters, their husbands were taken to. They want
them to stop, they shouldn't search anymore, they must forget. Because
the anger of the mothers is a terrible anger. Their hatred scares the
enemies. The enemy fears these eyes, the thousand tones of pain, these
thousand kinds of anger. They know one day, a day which is not so far
anymore, this hatred will cause their end. They have arrested their
children, their husbands, and they made them disappear. But every time
the mothers show up with the pictures of those who they have made
disappeared, they get frightened. As if they people they made
disappear, the people they murdered, are still alive! As if the people
they murdered under torture, they buried in the middle of the night in
unknown graveyards or rubbish-dumps, or thrown into the sea from
planes, are standing up again, demanding justice. Our mothers will
never forget their children. They will go on looking for them with
their pictures in their hands, with anger in their hearts and hope in
their eyes... They will look for their children on rubbish-dumps, in
unknown graveyards. They will get those who made their children
disappear, and they will repeat the same question again and again:
"Where is my child?"

-- 
Press Agency Ozgurluk
For justice, democracy and human rights in Turkey and Kurdistan!
Website: http://www.ozgurluk.org                          
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