Never Forget the Roboski Massacre by the Region - 28/12/2017 11:59
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www.theregion.org Never forget the Roboski massacre by The Region - 28/12/2017 11:59 Roboski is a small isolated Kurdish mountain village on the Turkish Iraqi border. At 21:39 on December 28, 2011, disaster struck and in an instant the village lost its youth when they became victim to the Turkish government’s ‘war on terror’. Thirty- four of a party of 38 - most of them children - were slaughtered in an aerial bombardment by a Turkish F-16 fighter jet. Those killed were engaging in traditional cross-border trade. Roboski is a poor village where there is little to no work, cross-border trade provides a small and welcome income for the older men and pocket money for the purchase of notebooks, stationary and pens for the teenagers. The job was one of the few, if not only options villages had for sustenance in a district where cross-border trade continues to be the main source of regular income. As soon as villagers heard of the bombing they made the desperate journey to the border – bodies and body parts lay beside dead donkeys, strewn in the white snow. Blue plastic jerry cans and the food the travellers carried with them littered the site. Photographs taken at the time capture a scene of devastation. We learn from the families that medical assistance and ambulances were prevented from attending the site of the massacre for some hours and that the military refused to organize an immediate rescue because they feared retaliation from the villagers. A massive group of human rights activists, union members, doctors and lawyers headed to Roboski village. According to their report on the trip, they said: "Some of the victims froze to death due to lack of first aid." Here is the aftermath of the massacre. December 28, 2011: Television channels broke the Roboksi news almost 12 hours after the air strike. In a statement, Turkish Army said: "Abnormal activity has been detected on our border where terrorists frequently use a gateway. Targets have been bombarded between 9:37 PM and 10:24 PM." December 29, 2011: PM Erdogan made his first statement concerning the air strike: "We have seen similar border activities where they were smuggling arms prior to massive terrorist raids. The public demanded then we should have intervened back then. This is what we did now." The Roboski victims' funerals were held. AKP Deputy Chair Hüseyin Celik said the air strike was an "operational accident". December 30, 2011: Erdogan, then the PM, congratulated the military staff for their sensitivity on the issue "despite the media". January 9: A military investigation was launched and Gendarmerie Colonel Huseyin Onur Guney was suspended from duty. Another 17 active duty army staff were prosecuted for allowing border smuggling. 5 individuals were arrested for attempting to murder Uludere district governor Naif Yavuz. January 11: The Turkish Parliament formed a special commission to investigate the killings in Ortasu village, the officially recognized name for Roboski. January 16: Roboski massacre survivors Davut, Servet and Hacı Encu testified on allegations of passport law abuse, illegal border-crossing and smuggling charges at a local military base in Gulyazi. February 4-6: A Parliamentary commission was dispatched for a field investigation in Roboski. February 16: Some commission members protested the army's action after watching drone recordings on the day of the incident. March 1: "The army didn't bomb the people of Roboski on purpose," said Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc. April 5: The Defense Ministry submitted an undisclosed report to the parliamentary commission a report declaring that a Diyarbakir special prosecution office and another Uludere district court issued a media coverage ban. June 28: Hundreds of protestors in Roboski became subject to police violence when heading to the area where the killings took place. No villager is untouched by this crime. Twenty-eight of the dead from this small mountain community were part of the same extended family and shared the same surname, Encu. Grief here is in one sense overwhelming, woven into the fabric of everyday life. The Head of the Justice and Truth Commission of Ä°stanbul branch of Turkey’s Human Rights Association Mine Nazari said: “All officials and institutions of the state of Republic of Turkey have absolved themselves from this crime… They have got away with it by using their political, military, and bureaucratic powers… And, they continue to run away from it.” Even after 6 years, nothing has happened to those responsible for the massacre. The State has been doing nothing to pick up the pieces. To make matters worse, activists advocating for the rights of the villagers and massacre survivors have been prosecuted. .