The Elders Dig Cyprus

John Elkington

February 10, 2011

For me, The Elders represent one of the most interesting social initiatives today, worldwide.  And that view was confirmed today when I went along to Portcullis House, Westminster, to listen to Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (two of The Elders) debate a new film on Cyprus, subtitled Digging the Past to Find the Future. Very moving, but also a venture that underscores the enormous potential of truth and reconciliation processes in drawing together divided communities.

Having grown up in Cyprus in the 1950s, I was horrified to see the island descend into savagery in the 1960s and 1970s, triggering the Turkish invasion of the north in 1974. I had concluded that I couldn’t return to the north, where some of my favourite places in the world are to be found, until it was free from Turkish occupation – though I changed my mind  after the Turkish Cypriots voted more sensibly than their Green counterparts early in the new century, and I returned to the island in March 2005. Once again, I was overwhelmed by its tragic beauty.

I knew about the 2,000-odd ‘disappeared’ people, from both communities, but it was something else today to see filmed coverage of the excavation of wells and other places where the bodies were dumped by the executioners on both sides – and the painstaking reconstruction of the skeletons, with multiple bullet-holes through a number of the skulls.

Simon Hughes and The Elders CEO Mabel van Oranje (who I met a couple of weeks back in Riyadh) shared the chairing of the discussion session, during which four young Cypriots – two each from either side of the Green Line – gave their own views on the island’s past and the future. As someone said from the audience, these were four wise youngsters.