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The killing of newborn children; Brindaran Cave

Mihe, a witness to the Zilan Valley massacre, told his son-in-law Ahmad:

“We looked at the bodies and the three cavalrymen. We saw a little child get up and walk among the dead. The child went to the mother's body and removed the mother's clothes. The child started sucking the mother's breast for milk. We hoped the soldiers would not find the child and wanted to go and rescue the child later, but we saw a soldier going straight to the body of the child's mother. We said to ourselves, "Thank, God!" The soldier will come and take the child and rescue him, but we saw he hit the child by buttstock and once or twice lifted him, and left him to the mother's chest. Then the soldier got back on his horse and went with the other two men.

Ahmad continued his father-in-law:

"After the three cavalrymen left, we left the trees and went among the bodies. We found three or four people who were still alive and took them to the village of Hassan Avdal and stayed there."

Brindaran Cave

Mihe, a witness to the Zilan Valley massacre, told his son-in-law Ahmad:

“We stayed there until late at night and didn't warn elder people. There is a cave called 'Sari Tash' on a hill near the Zilan Valley River. In front of the cave, there is some Shilan (flower) covered there. But we had no food, no water, and nothing to eat. Only a little saltstone remained in the pocket of our friend Yusuf Mamo. They used it to make sheep follow them, and because of hunger, we licked it to prevent dying. In that cave, we treated the wounds of our wounded friends with herbal medicine. We stayed there for a week, knowing that we could not live without food and water. Two of our friends went to Hasan Avdal village to bring us some food, but when they arrived at the village, they saw all the village houses burned. After all the villagers were killed, the soldiers returned to the villages and burned all the villages in the area.

Our friends, who were searching the village, saw that Ahmad Obaid's house had not been burned. Looking inside the house, they found salty cheese. This type of cheese is made very salty to avoid spoiling. They brought some cheese, but it was too salty to eat. At night, we would put some cheese in the river until morning, then we would bring it and distribute it, each of us eating a little. Our injuries were healing. Then we left the cave and each went somewhere."

Interviewing the wounded

After the massacres in the Zilan Valley carried out by the Turkish state soldiers, a group of wounded who had fled to the mountainous areas and hid in caves and forests, gradually reappeared after a while and all went to their relatives.

Although the wounded had known each other and become friends, they each returned to their hometowns.

According to a witness to the massacre, Bakr Bag, son of Qulikhan Agha, Shukri Agha, Rashke Misto, and seven others from the same family did not leave the Zilan Valley area, but stayed there for three years in the village Qulikhan Agha as “state convicts” and searched the area at night.

But three years later, the ten Kurds left the village of Qulikhan Agha and moved to a village in Khamori, Agri. But after a while some people complained about them and one day they saw the soldiers surrounding them. They didn't even have weapons to fight and surrendered to the soldiers and were taken to Adana prison.

Part of the book "Ten Massacres in Three Villages of Zilan", Zainal Abedin Zinar, Kurmanji Kurdish, Farhangi Kurdi Publishing House, Sweden/ Stockholm, 2023

To be continued ...