They sat in for Armenian Intellectuals and the Children

"The mentality that lost our children is the continuation of the mentality that lost our Armenian intellectuals"

Saturday mothers staged a sit in at their 369. meeting for the children and Armenian intellectuals disappeared in custody earlier on April 23rd Children's Day and April 24th- the anniversary of the disappearance of Armenian intellectuals at Galatasaray Square.

"Davut had six sheep and 10 goats. What could be the guilt of a child who is just 12 years old?" says Ramazan Turan, uncle of Davut Altınkaynak who was tortured to death.

"It's double dealing to celebrate Children's Day"

"While the fate of the children lost custody are kept as secret, even the bones of those children are witheld from their mothers, it's double dealing to celebrate Children's Day" says Neriman Deniz who read the press release on behalf of The Human Rights Association.

It was written at the prosecution records that Davut Altınkaynak (12), Seyhan Doğan (13), Nedim Akyön'ün (14) were tortured to death.

The Ministry of Justice didn't give an appointment to the families that asked for the immediate identification of the bones of their children that were out of the wells.

Turkey was condemned to European Court of Human Rights because of the disappearances of İlyas Diril (14), Münir Sarıtaş (13), İkram İpek (14).

The responsible people were put into record however the fate of the children is still a secret. The perpetrators are still around with impunity.

They were the opinion leaders of the Armenian community

Deniz reminded that it would be the 97^th anniversary of the detention of the Armenian intellectuals on 24 April, 2012.

There were 220 people: They were the opinion leaders, the most respected names in the Armenian community. Parlamentarians, intellectuals, writers, poets, musicians, scientists, lawyers, pharmacists, physicians ...

The Interior Minister Talat Paşa gave the instructions and İstanbul Chief of Police performed the operation. The people taken into custody were brought to Ankara by train from Haydarpaşa. 139 of them were dead without a gravestone.

As we didn't face this Special Organization mentality, the coup and massacre tradition went on.

The "Prayer" of Siamanto

The "Prayer" poem of "the best representative of Lyric Poetry" poet Siamanto (Atom Yarcanyan) was read at the sit-in act. Siamanto was also killed by Special Organization thugs.

The Prayer

The swans, in discouragement, have migrated

from the poisonous lakes this evening,

And sad sisters dream of brothers under the prison walls.

Battles have ended on the blossoming fields of lilies,

And fair women follow coffins from underground passages,

And sing, with heads bowed down towards the ground.

Oh, make haste! Our aching bodies are frozen in these pitiless glooms.

Make haste towards the chapel, where life will be more merciful,

The chapel of the graveyard where our brother sleeps!

An orphan swan is suffering within my soul,

And there, over newly-buried bodies,

It rains blood-it pours from mine eyes.

A crowd of cripples pass along the paths of my heart,

And with them pass barefooted blind men,

In the divine hope of meeting some one in prayer.

And the red dogs of the desert howled all one night,

After hopelessly moaning over the sands

For some unknown, incomprehensible grief.

And the storm of my thoughts ceased with the rain;

The waves were cruelly imprisoned under the frozen waters;

The leaves of huge oaks, like wounded birds,

Dropped with cries of anguish.

And the dark night was deserted, like the vast infinite;

And, with the lonely and bloody moon,

Like a myriad motionless marble statues,

All the dead bodies of our earth arose to pray for one another. (NV)