"Acknowledging each other's pain - Celebrating togetherness"

      From my years of involvement in the citizen peace building work I 
have discovered some basic 'raw' truths that have also been the experience 
of possibly everyone who has been involved in this kind of work. First, is 
the fact that the pain of 'our' side blinds us to the pain of the 'other' 
side. In both communities what is high on the social agenda and dialogue 
is the sufferings that 'we' endured in the hands of the 'other'. This 
process results in the creation of a generalised image of the 'other' as a 
barbaric monster rather than a human being. Put simply, this process 
dehumanises the 'other' and thus makes the prospect of peaceful 
coexistence that much more remote. 

     At the same time, inside both communities, the issue of the 
sufferings of the 'other side' is invariably a taboo subject, virtually a 
non-issue and those who dare raise it are most likely to be branded as 
traitors, politically immature, hurting the 'national cause', 
propagandists of the enemy and so on. For example, in the Greek Cypriot 
community very little is known of innocent Turkish Cypriots who suffered 
especially from the 1963 till 1974, while in the Turkish Cypriot community 
the sufferings of Greek Cypriots especially during and since the 1974 war 
are not subjects that are particularly talked about.

      This blindness to the sufferings of the other functions as a major 
obstacle to building the peace on this island. The prospect of a solution 
creates fear in the hearts of many  ordinary people as the questions are 
worriedly being asked: "What if all these terrible things happen again? 
How can we trust them?". This lack of trust caused because of the mistakes 
and crimes of the past must be dealt with, otherwise no political solution 
can survive the test of time. 

     I wish it was as simple as some people sometimes say, "Why don't we 
just forget the past and just look to the future?". I believe that in 
order 'close' the book of the past we first need to know what is in it, no 
matter how ugly or politically uncomfortable for 'our' side or 'our 
motherland' it may be. Otherwise it will haunt us for ever and the 
prospect of a truly peaceful solution will never become a living reality. 
In Cyprus we desperately need on the level of the ordinary citizens an 
initiation of a process of healing of the deep wounds of the past, the 
wounds that are still open, that are still bleeding...

    What we have experienced in many bi-communal encounters is that the 
critical turning point where fear is replaced by trust, where the humanity 
of the other is rediscovered, where mutual tears of forgiveness initiate 
the healing process is the point where one acknowledges the wrong that 
his/her side has caused to the other. This encourages the other side to 
also come out and speak using a similar language. In this way the pain of 
the past instead of being a stumbling block to building the peace, instead 
of being an instrument of one-sided propaganda to gain political points, 
it is being transformed into a vehicle of regaining the much needed trust 
between the ordinary people of the two communities in Cyprus. 

     But the past was not only pain and suffering. On the contrary, for 
every act of violence there were immeasurably more cases of ordinary 
people from both communities who experienced deep and genuine and truthful 
friendships that are still treasured in their hearts today despite the 
long years of separation. These experiences of the older generation of 
Cypriots are also part of our history that is often ignored. And yet it is 
from here that we can start building the hope of the future. These bridges 
between the older generation that were severed by violence must be rebuilt 
and, at the same time, we must also continue building new bridges among 
the young generation of Cypriots who never had the chance to know anyone 
from the 'other side'. 
   
     The main theme of the project that is now being proposed has, 
therefore, two parts: "Acknowledging each other's pain - celebrating 
togetherness". These two are not mutually exclusive. They are both real 
and are both needed. It is my firm belief that speaking out by using such 
terms is one of the most important function that must be performed by the 
citizens who want to contribute to the building of the peace in our 
island. In other words, we need to become, each in our own community, 
'ambassadors' of the pain of the other community, and at the same time 
engage in a tireless campaign to both re-build old bridges and to build 
new ones. 
 
     And for those Greek Cypriots who are worried that it does not suit us 
politically to say that Turkish Cypriots have suffered in the hands of 
evil violent men, I say that this little 'secret' of ours is very well 
known in the international community anyway. And to those Turkish Cypriots 
who think that this story of bridges and togetherness is one more 
Byzantine plot of the Greek Cypriots so they can 'dominate us' again, I 
say that they better wake up from the mummified past to which they have 
been stubbornly stuck and realise the world at the 21st century is 
radically different from the world of the 1960s and early 1970's...  

Nicos Anastasiou,