WHEN THE wife of a missing person went to find her husband some years ago at a site where he had reportedly been buried decades earlier, she honestly believed she would find him alive under the earth and rubble.
That she could believe that is testament to the horrific stain the issue of the missing has left on Cyprus’ modern history and one that continues to painfully consume the lives of those left behind.
According to official statistics, 1,464 Greek Cypriots and 494 Turkish Cypriots were recorded missing in Cyprus during the violence of the 1960s and 1970s.
So far, 840 individuals have been exhumed from different burial sites across the island. From these, 314 have been identified (253 Greek Cypriots and 61 Turkish Cypriots) and returned to their families.
The response to finding individuals hidden under floorboards, in wells and mass pits, to holding funerals almost half a century after their deaths has been relatively subdued. While the issue of the missing plays a key and emotive role in each community’s official narrative, questions on how the bodies of the ‘other’ community ended up where they did have rarely been asked, and if at all, are largely left unanswered.
A good place to start this discussion would be in schools but until now teachers never had the support, guidance or knowledge to tackle it.
A group of scholars recently joined forces with Cypriot civil society and international organisations to prepare a groundbreaking package of educational materials to guide teachers on how to help students “think historically” about this highly sensitive issue.
Christalla Yakinthou, from the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) in Lebanon, a county with officially 17,000 missing, is one of the co-authors of the education pack.
The former ICTJ country manager for Cyprus said the group worked to marry history education with human rights, noting that “that in and of itself is a revolutionary step”.
“The project is a global leader linking education with the issue of missing persons. As far as we are aware, there is no education materials anywhere dealing with the missing and disappeared, which is remarkable because there are missing and disappeared everywhere.”
Yakinthou explained that the education pack aims to guide teachers through a careful and thoughtful process in which students can learn about the missing issue, what it means, how it affects families and destabilises societies, not just at home but throughout the world.
“There is no systematic way to deal with this issue because it is overwhelming, frightening and very sensitive,” she said.
While the materials use Spain, former Yugoslavia, Morocco and Guatemala as case studies, the main focus is on Cyprus.
“In Lebanon, like in every conflict, there is a belief that the situation is unique. While each conflict is unique in its own way, in many cases, countries are confronted with the same problems but find interesting and unique solutions,” said Yakinthou.
“For example, Guatemala takes one approach and Cyprus another. Why? It forces you to think through that. The pack can facilitate that discussion in a thoughtful, structured and safe way in the classroom,” she added.
Copies of the education pack have already been sent to Lebanon to be used as supplementary materials. Yakinthou acknowledges that getting them into the education system will not be as easy.
However, the focus is predominately on Cyprus making it easier to use in education systems around the world.
“It might be easier for Lebanon to look more at Cyprus’ case than its own,” she said.
What about Cyprus? Can educators transcend the narrow confines of official histories to talk about a problem that affects both communities on the island?
AHDR project manager and co-author of the pack, Rana Zincir Celal, said Cyprus was still dealing with the reverberations in society as a result of the missing.
“We still need a reckoning in society about why this has happened, how we want to think and remember the missing as part of a wider discussion of the past,” she said.
Little thought is given to the impact it has on children, those who grew up with a missing relative or those who were born after the turbulent period in Cyprus’ history.
“We’re trying to show this is really an inter-generational process that you can’t leave behind. This material is just as useful for addressing the pain of those who experienced loss as it is for young people asking questions about the photo of an uncle on the wall or monuments they see,” said Celal.
The pack aims to build historical empathy and help students aged 12 to 15 to understand why these things happen, why society chooses to respond the way it does.
“We’re not trying to impose a point of view, but enable people to ask questions, equipped with a framework, structure and more information than they may have had access to,” said Celal.
Researchers were surprised at how little information is available in the public sphere on the missing. For a teacher who wants to teach or discuss it, they would really struggle to find a comprehensive overview of the issue in Cyprus, highlighting the need for the education packs.
“It is so easy to manipulate emotions in the public sphere. If you try to address a controversial issue without that disciplinary approach to history you might only reinforce stereotypes rather than help overcome them,” she said.
Lukas Perikleous, another co-author, said approaching history as a discipline allows you to tackle controversial issues because the focus is on helping students develop their thinking and understanding.
The biggest obstacle to teaching controversial issues is the notion of having to accept the perspective of your enemy. Perikleous argues that the point is to understand it, without having to accept it.
“The idea is not to make people accept the other perspective, but understand it, then you can agree or disagree. And nobody can deny or claim we don’t want to understand other perspectives,” he said.
In Cyprus, the issue of the missing is usually taught not in terms of history but within the context of the violent struggle and the fight for justice of either community.
In the Greek Cypriot education system, says Perikleous, the issue comes up when talking about the Turkish invasion, and the missing are promoted as victims of the “evil enemy”, whose fate needs to be uncovered.
“Most students, based on what we teach them, would think that the only place in the world where you have missing people is in Cyprus and from their own community only,” he said.
Now, for the “first time”, teaching packs are available in Greek, Turkish and English with proposals on how to discuss many issues in history education.
“It’s very ambitious. In Cyprus, most teachers have never worked with this disciplinary approach.”
Asked to explain what it means to promote “historical empathy” in education, he said: “Basically, it’s helping students develop their understanding of why people in the past did what they did.”
He added: “Research shows we can do this by helping them understand that people in the past saw the world differently because they had different beliefs, understandings of the situation. To do that, you need to understand the historical context, situation they lived in.”
Time will tell how many teachers will use the packs and workshops offered by the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) on history education as a discipline.
It’s no walk in the park for any teacher but at least now, the framework exists for those wanting to imbue their students with critical thinking.
Or perhaps the material is too close for co
mfort, and Cyprus’ classrooms will have to wait until the focus is on another part of the world.
n The pack was prepared by teams of experts and members of Cyprus’ Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR), with support and funding from ICTJ, The Elders, the EU and UNDP.
