JINHA

NEWS CENTER – The weekly actions for justice for the missing and disappeared in Northern Kurdistan this week called attention to the countless mothers in the region who live every day hoping for news from their disappeared children.

The Saturday Mothers (DayikênŞemiyê) and Human Rights Association (İHD) held actions in the cities of Yüksekova, Batman and Diyarbakır this week to call for justice for the disappeared.

"Every week we announce the perpetrators of the 'unknown killer' murders—name by name, address by address," said MuhyettinÜnal of İHD, speaking at theYüksekova action, in the province of Hakkari. "But the AKP government, by taking no steps, protects the killers."

Diyarbakır co-mayor GültanKışanak attended this week's demonstration in Diyarbakır, now in its 326th week. The demonstration this week was dedicated to the story of Mehmet ŞerifAvşar, who was disappeared in 1994 in the city and whose corpse was later found at the city gate.

Mehmet Şerif's brother, Abdullah Avşar, told the story of how his brother was taken away from his workplace one day by someone who had confessed to the state, five paramilitary village guards and a specialist sergeant. The family pursued justice at the local gendarmerie station, but the state insisted that, "we don't do the arrests."

The relatives of the missing called attention to the fact that with Mother's Day tomorrow, many mothers live with the ongoing pain of never knowing the fate of their children.

"Here, the mothers who sit here every week live with the hope that next week, they'll get word from their children," said NezahatTeke of the Peace Mothers Assembly. "At this point, they're not even waiting for their children to come back; they just want to know how they were killed and what their fate was. Now we're crying out: 'world, humanity, where are you?'"

(ekip/fk/cm)