Graves of YPS (Civil Defense Units) members, who lost their lives two years ago in the resistance in Amed’s Sur district and were buried in the Yeniköy Cemetery in the Bağlar district, have been damaged by the police. The police have broken the gravestones in the cemetery.

The governorate sent a document to the Metropolitan Municipality and issued an order to break the gravestones that included photographs and inscriptions like “Şehîdê Surê” (“Sur Martyr”) and “Date of Martyrdom”. The trustee forwarded the order to the cemetery workers immediately, but the families refused. The police then entered the cemetery at midnight and broke five gravestones. Families are protesting the incident and say they will rebuild the graves in the same way.

GREAT FURY

The families visit the cemetery every Thursday and touch their children’s graves in longing. In the most recent visit, they voiced their fury for the attack on the graves. Gravestone of Xebat Erkaplan, killed in Sur when he was 25, has been broken. Among the broken stone, his smile shines through from a photograph. Every family that passes through touches Xebat’s broken photograph, and then curse the attackers. Xebat’s sisters expressed their fury against this brutality. One sister hugged the gravestone and the other fumbled with the mud to wipe out the policeman’s footprint on the grave. Xebat’s sisters sang in mourning by the grave and said, “We buried Xebat here today, not 2 years ago. This has hurt us as much as the first day. What do they want from our brother? Oh Xebat, rise and avenge this!”

“THEY DON’T EVEN LEAVE OUR DEAD ALONE”

Mother of Eşref Polat (Kendal), one of the young people from Sur buried side by side, Gülsüm Polat cleaned the broken grave and put a broken piece of the gravestone on her heart. With tears in her eyes, Polat said: “May Allah avenge us. They don’t even leave our dead and our graves alone. Enough with this cruelty. No other peoples have this much pressure on them. How is this a Muslim country? Those who did this can’t be Muslims. I wish those who broke this gravestone to crumble like this grave.”

“THEIR HEROISM WON’T BE FORGOTTEN”

Mother Polat had a hard time speaking. She said, “There is no law, no justice in this country. Somebody must put an end to it. I will redo my son’s gravestone. I will rewrite ‘martyr’ on it. My son is a martyr of Kurdistan. Whatever they do, they can’t make people forget the heroism of our children. I raised my son in all our poverty, and they killed him. What did they want with his grave?”

In another one of the damaged graves lies Cüneyt Yeni (Çekdar) who lost his life in Sur. His family lives in Amed’s Lice district and still don’t know that their son’s grave has been damaged as the family wasn’t visiting this week. The other families cleaned the graves up for them.

“ENOUGH”

Fırat Çelik’s (Xebat Andok) father Vezir Çelik rushed to the cemetery as soon as he heard the graves had been damaged, and said he had been holding watch over his son’s grave. Çelik said the cemetery was surrounded by the special operations and riot police and the police broke the gravestones. Çelik said, “What do they want from us? When I went into the cemetery the police was in the graves. When I arrived I was afraid they would do something to me, but I still came. They circled my son’s grave but they didn’t tear it down. Now they are intimidating us. They should leave us and our children alone.”