Sunday, April 21, 2019

Sevgul Uludag first woman from Cyprus nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her journalistic work bringing Turkish and Greek Cypriots together.

My friend Sevgul Uludag has been nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. 
She is the first woman from Cyprus to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her journalistic work in bringing together the two main communities of the island – Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots – by showing them with her work that their pain is a common human pain and through her work producing democratic solutions to the problems of the communities in Cyprus and her peace activism.

She helped to set up TOGETHER WE CAN where relatives of “missing persons” and victims of war from the two communities have been working together for the first time in the past decade to find burial sites of “missing persons”, as well as pioneering for reconciliation and peace and for facing the history of the conflict together in order to move towards the future. She set up a “Hot Line” with her own mobile phone and mobilised readers from both parts of the divided island to call in and give information to her about this sensitive humanitarian issue and as a result of these calls, many burial sites of “missing persons” on both sides of the island were found and remains of “missing persons” were exhumed by the official Cyprus Missing Persons’ Committee and returned to the relatives for burial. Her work heals wounds of the war and conflict in Cyprus. 
Uludag born in 1958 in Cyprus is an investigative journalist writing in newspapers in both parts of the divided island Cyprus in Turkish in YENIDUZEN and in Greek in POLITIS and on her blog in English, has focused for the past two decades on stories of “missing persons”, “mass graves” and “rapes during times of conflict” has been nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. She is also a gender and peace activist and spent last four decades of her life, bringing together women from across the dividing line in Cyprus, setting up joint women NGOs, training women on peace, gender and organisational skills, pioneering in this field as a peace activist. 
She is one of the founders of HANDS ACROSS THE DIVIDE, the first bicommunal women’s NGO in Cyprus. She had also set up the Women’s Research Centre which held activities around gender and peace for many years, in coalition with women NGOs from both parts of the island. She was also one of the founders of Women’s Movement for Peace and a Federal Solution in Cyprus in the 80s… She worked voluntarily in the Women’s Platform in the 90s to train women on a big scale from rural to urban areas on issues of gender, peace and organisational skills.
She is the first woman from Cyprus to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her journalistic work in bringing together the two main communities of the island – Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots – by showing them with examplary pieces of her work that their pain is a common human pain and through her work producing democratic solutions to the problems of the communities in Cyprus and her peace activism.
She helped to set up TOGETHER WE CAN where relatives of “missing persons” and victims of war from the two communities have been working together for the first time in the past decade to find burial sites of “missing persons”, as well as pioneering for reconciliation and peace and for facing the history of the conflict together in order to move towards the future. She set up a “Hot Line” with her own mobile phone and mobilised readers from both parts of the divided island to call in and give information to her about this sensitive humanitarian issue and as a result of these calls, many burial sites of “missing persons” on both sides of the island were found and remains of “missing persons” were exhumed by the official Cyprus Missing Persons’ Committee and returned to the relatives for burial. Her work heals wounds of the war and conflict in Cyprus.
Sevgul Uludag has several international awards for her work like “Courage in Journalism” given by the International Women’s Media Foundation, “European Citizens’ Prize” given by the European Parliament, “Press Freedom Award” given by the Reporters Without Borders Austrian section. She has several books like “Strategy and Planning for Women in Politics” (in Turkish) and “Oysters with the Missing Pearls – Untold stories of missing persons, mass graves and memories from the past of Cyprus” (in Turkish, Greek and English), “Cyprus: The Untold Stories” (in English).
Throughout her life, Sevgul Uludag has been receiving death threats and she faced hate speech, psychological terror, intimidation… But she did not give up what she was doing and her work as an investigative journalist and as a peace and gender activist has been based on humanitarism and she works voluntarily as a humanitarian task, inspiring the two main communities of the island and giving hope for peace and reconciliation…
Contact details of Sevgul Uludag:
Sevgululudag99@gmail.com
Caramel_cy@yahoo.com
00 357 99 966518 and 00 90 542 853 8436

Photo shows Sevgul Uludag at the burial site in Kytherea,Cyprus.

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