Sunday, 4 November 2007
ANKARA - Two men who spent years in the notorious Belene prison camp in the 1980s seem to have never lost their smiling eyes.
The redness of those eyes and their shaking hands, however, indicate more than anything else the level of the torture that Ş+-kr+- Altay and Nasıf Mutlu once suffered as part of the then-totalitarian communist regime's campaign for Bulgarization of the country's Turkish minority. Nevertheless, they constantly maintain a surprising level of decency while they detail their ordeals.
From their earnest determination to seek justice for their grievances, it is obvious in every little detail that these two men from the Association of Justice, Rights, Culture and Solidarity in the Balkans (BAHAD) have not sold out those grievances throughout their six years of efforts at the Council of Europe, the European Union and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). For Mutlu and Altay, it is as though the period between 1984 and 1989, when the then-Bulgarian government, led by late Todor Zhivkov, attempted the forced Bulgarization of the country's Turkish minority by placing them in prison camps because they had been against the regime or because they had not been sympathetic to communism, happened just yesterday. Yet, a Bulgarian diplomat, speaking under condition of anonymity with Today's Zaman, suggested that these events "happened a long time ago" and that an apology once offered by then Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov to those victims ought to have been sufficient. Kostov, during a 1998 visit to Turkey's Bursa province where many ethnic Turks who were forced to leave Bulgaria are still living, decried the Zhivkov administration as "national criminals" and offered his apology, pledging that Bulgaria would never let such things to take place again.
"Apologies are not enough," Mutlu said in an interview with Sunday's Zaman in Strasbourg where he and Altay held talks with officials from the Council of Europe as well as from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on the sidelines of the autumn session from Oct. 1 to Oct. 5.
"There is need for making this apology official via, for example, a parliamentary declaration assuring that these kinds of humanitarian crimes will never take place again. The most important thing is to bring the architects of this campaign and those who implemented the campaign to justice," Mutlu stressed, in a way summarizing the basic goal of their six-year-long struggle, which was conducted with only a modest budget.
Nevertheless, summarizing what happened between 1984 and 1989 in Bulgaria within the limits of a newspaper article is not that simple. Explanations by Eşref Kahraman, head of BAHAD, may be helpful: "The Bulgarian totalitarian state started an assimilation act towards the Turkish minority at the end of 1984 and the beginning of 1985. More than 1 million Turks were renamed by force within two months. The Bulgarian totalitarian state literally started a war against these undefended and poor people. The totalitarian regime mobilized all of its force: army, police troops, special soldiers, armed volunteers, even an organization of children. The authorities of the totalitarian state began persecuting the Turkish population in all of the regions [under its control]. Many people were detained in the police station for days and beaten to death. During this act of the totalitarian state, 517 people were arrested and sent to the concentration camp on Belene Island, and nearly 400 people were exiled or imprisoned by fake courts. Before being sent to the concentration camp, exiled or imprisoned we were subjected to unbearable cruelties and brutalities. We were made to live in conditions which can't be described. Our families were persecuted and put under psychological pressure again and again. In 1989 the Bulgarian totalitarian state launched [a campaign of] ethnic cleansing. Within 72 days 350,000 Turks were deported from the country."
BAHAD stresses that the Bulgarian authorities do their best to hinder the opening of a court case against the criminals who committed crimes against humanity because the present leaders, members of the government and many of the parliamentarians are followers of the former totalitarian state.
"Let me put it like this: In 2004 Vassil Mrachkov, the last prosecutor-general of the Todor Zhivkov era, who was a main actor in the communist-era renaming of Bulgarian Turks, was decorated with the highest state order, the Stara Planina," Altay recalls. He adds: "Current Bulgarian administration intends to extend the issue indefinitely until a time when all victims of the Belene camp have passed away. According to an article in the Bulgarian penal code, each of the aggrieved parties -- 917 people -- we represent has to testify to the court in order to have a case opened. This is impossible. We will all eventually die and the European Union member, Bulgaria, will get clear of its humanitarian crimes which were committed just yesterday."
The same Bulgarian diplomat who suggested that those crimes were committed a long time ago also noted that his country signed the European Convention on Human Rights and, therefore, cannot and will not be charged for those crimes.
Nonetheless, Altay and Mutlu have a reason to maintain hope while returning to Bursa, where they have been living since 1991 after being exiled from Bulgaria: The general assembly meeting of PACE and Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, devoted a considerable time to hear about to their cause.
Hammarberg told the two men that he will pay an official visit to Bulgaria in February, at which he will put the issue on the agenda of his talks with Bulgarian officials. In the meantime, following the first trilateral meeting between BAHAD, the Council of Europe and Bulgarian officials on the sidelines of the past autumn session, Bulgarian members of PACE have been assigned by the Council of Europe's monitoring committee to launch comprehensive research on the issue and to produce a report by December before the next trilateral meeting in January, 2008.
Developments in upcoming months are likely to indicate whether or not a price will be paid without being too late to address these truly deep grievances. These are grievances will not simply fade away and BAHAD's efforts are not like those of global lobbying efforts held at considerable financial cost. They are sincere grievances; they can only be assuaged by justice.
14.10.2007
Source: EMİNE KART, Today's Zaman
