Hamamboculeri.org: Alternatif Haber,Ingilizce, 5 Eylul 2002
Kıbrıs Alternatif Haber
6 youth organizations demonstrated: Youth raised its voice for peace
On the 4th of September, 6 youth organizations consisting of TKP Youth branch, YBH Youth, Cypriot Youth Platform, Cypriot Youth Movement, Ekim Youth and Cypriot Youth Group demonstrated at the Ercan (Timbu) Airport in north Cyprus with a three meter placard saying “Lack of a solution is BANNED”. Around 70 members of the youth organizations sang songs and shouted slogans for two hours and at one point Denktash came near the youth before he left for Paris and restated his known views.
The youth shouted slogans such as “Peace in Cyprus cannot be prevented!”, “Youth will come and future will be free with us!”, “Don’t be silent, shout, peoples are brothers”, “What do we want? PEACE. When? NOW! Will they not solve it? WE WILL”…
As Denktash’s plane left for Paris, Murat Kanatli, General Secretary of YBH Youth read the statement of six organizations to the press. He said that Denktash’s understanding of “peace” and the understanding of youth of peace were quite different. What youth meant by peace was within their press statement. Kanatli said that Denktash’s main idea was “lack of a solution” and this created a lot of problems for youth. Kanatli said that this was reflected in their placard and thanked everyone who attended the demonstration. He then read the press statement of the 6 youth organizations.
Press statement of Six youth organization
We, as members of the TKP Youth branch, YBH Youth, Cypriot Youth Platform, Cypriot Youth Movement, Ekim Youth and Cypriot Youth Group who believe that the problems of the youth such as emigration, cultural assimilation, unemployment, education, de-politicization, alienation from ourselves and the community, military problems and substance addiction should not be kept outside the scope of communal problems. We share the opinion that most of us, the youth, has been kept from a multi-dimensional life and social activities and that we are heading towards isolation from the world.
We have decided to work and act together in order to be able to take up problems of youth in all its aspects and make progress towards its solutions. The end result of where we are is that the present status quo cannot be a solution, that the status quo on the island must be changed immediately in order to open the way for the solution of the problems of the youth. The change of the status quo must be in line with High Level Agreements, relevant UN resolutions, must not be in contradiction to these and must take international law as its basis.
We are on the verge of an important process concerning the Enlargement of the European Union, prior to the EU Copenhagen Summit. This calendar is also valid for us and the present lack of a solution contains serious problems within this context. Therefore we would like to stress the fact that this makes our demand for a solution even more urgent.
We believe that those who make decisions in our names should defend the rights of their own people, not those of the ruling powers and that they should not disregard our existence in any way.
Under these conditions our message to the negotiators is that “LACK OF A SOLUTION IS BANNED”.
We would like to call on the negotiators once again and state that we ban them from making decisions that would affect our lives negatively. We call on them to re-think and re-evaluate decisions that would cause new wars, destructions, separations; decisions that would make us extinct through emigration, decisions that would make us live with new barbed wire in a new dark era of history. Youth is the future and we stress that we are determined; no matter what price we have to pay, to claim our future.
We wish success to the negotiators of the High Level Talks due to start on the 6th of September and call on them not to waste our hopes and return from Paris with news of the steps that would turn our common homeland Cyprus into an island of peace.
TKP Youth Branch, YBH Youth, Cypriot Youth Platform, Cyprus Youth Movement, Ekim Youth and Cypriot Youth Group
4 September 2002