My name is Salih Encü
My name is Salih Encü
My name is Salih Encü.
I am not a statistic
I am a “human being”!
And I have a story too…
I opened my eyes into the world in the village of Roboski… We were a family with seven members…
Except from the times I went to “smuggling”, I used to sit right beside my mother as I was the cherry of her cheek. However, you cannot walk against your fate… I was so poor that I had to leave my school so that my two elder brothers could continue their education…
However, I of course didn’t leave my dreams when I left my school. My father had become permanently disabled after he stepped on a mine fourteen years ago…
My brothers were supposed to g oto school and my father to walk, I had enough reasons to go to “smuggling”. As you see, I was their hope and they were mine…
Speaking of my father, I should tell you something that my friends have forgotten to tell about; people in Roboski don’t die because of bombs alone. It is not only poverty that we suffer from. There are also mines that kill, wound and disable people in the village of Roboski…
I was still 18, before I died…
That night actually…
Excuse me for not naming that night. I will call it just “the night”…
One day before that night, my mother, for whom I was the cherry of her cheek, insisted on not allowing me to go to smuggling. She said that I was too young, that I would get cold, that soldiers could wound me… Imagine wat she would have done if she had known that I was going to die…
My mom! How else could I ever tell you that the ways to border were the only choice given to us? I would have been happy all my life by sitting right beside you, not considering so many sorrows in the world…
The night after, that night in other words, I was determined to go! I went behind my 37 friends. We together made a way towards 38 bombs. We were caught together in the blaze that my friends had told you earlier… We were thirty eight people and thirty eight donkeys, seventy six lives…
With a child’s mind, Orhan and Erkan with fear hid themselves under donkeys. How could we ever have known that donkeys wouldn’t be able to protect us from the bombs? However, none of us had been hit by bombs before, including me…
The cherry of my mother died burning… My eyes looked for my mother… Everybody’s father was there, but not mine…The same thing happened once again when I was at school, at a parent-teacher meeting… That day too, I once again forgot that my father had one leg, he couldn’t walk all that way.
This may annoy you but I have several words to say;
I demand justice,
If the bombs that killed me didn’t kill the justice too…
Doesn’t everyone have the right to justice?
Or,
Should I apologize to the state because it has warted those huge, expensive bombs for killing me,
Should I thank the General Staff for not missing the target and for killing me!?
* Platform for Justice for Roboski publishes the life story of 34 people from the villages of Roboski and Gülyazý who were killed by bombs on 28 December, 2011. These stories which will be published for 34 days are also sent to the offices of President, Prime Minister, Ministry of Justice and Interior Ministry via fax and mail.
I am not a statistic
I am a “human being”!
And I have a story too…
I opened my eyes into the world in the village of Roboski… We were a family with seven members…
Except from the times I went to “smuggling”, I used to sit right beside my mother as I was the cherry of her cheek. However, you cannot walk against your fate… I was so poor that I had to leave my school so that my two elder brothers could continue their education…
However, I of course didn’t leave my dreams when I left my school. My father had become permanently disabled after he stepped on a mine fourteen years ago…
My brothers were supposed to g oto school and my father to walk, I had enough reasons to go to “smuggling”. As you see, I was their hope and they were mine…
Speaking of my father, I should tell you something that my friends have forgotten to tell about; people in Roboski don’t die because of bombs alone. It is not only poverty that we suffer from. There are also mines that kill, wound and disable people in the village of Roboski…
I was still 18, before I died…
That night actually…
Excuse me for not naming that night. I will call it just “the night”…
One day before that night, my mother, for whom I was the cherry of her cheek, insisted on not allowing me to go to smuggling. She said that I was too young, that I would get cold, that soldiers could wound me… Imagine wat she would have done if she had known that I was going to die…
My mom! How else could I ever tell you that the ways to border were the only choice given to us? I would have been happy all my life by sitting right beside you, not considering so many sorrows in the world…
The night after, that night in other words, I was determined to go! I went behind my 37 friends. We together made a way towards 38 bombs. We were caught together in the blaze that my friends had told you earlier… We were thirty eight people and thirty eight donkeys, seventy six lives…
With a child’s mind, Orhan and Erkan with fear hid themselves under donkeys. How could we ever have known that donkeys wouldn’t be able to protect us from the bombs? However, none of us had been hit by bombs before, including me…
The cherry of my mother died burning… My eyes looked for my mother… Everybody’s father was there, but not mine…The same thing happened once again when I was at school, at a parent-teacher meeting… That day too, I once again forgot that my father had one leg, he couldn’t walk all that way.
This may annoy you but I have several words to say;
I demand justice,
If the bombs that killed me didn’t kill the justice too…
Doesn’t everyone have the right to justice?
Or,
Should I apologize to the state because it has warted those huge, expensive bombs for killing me,
Should I thank the General Staff for not missing the target and for killing me!?
* Platform for Justice for Roboski publishes the life story of 34 people from the villages of Roboski and Gülyazý who were killed by bombs on 28 December, 2011. These stories which will be published for 34 days are also sent to the offices of President, Prime Minister, Ministry of Justice and Interior Ministry via fax and mail.
