Seyit Rıza's daughter, Leyla Ağar, said: "I want to utter a lament beside my father’s grave. Information regarding the massacre of 1937-38 in Dersim should be revealed.”

As the anniversary of the Dersim Genocide of 1937-38 approaches, the people of Dersim are reiterating their demands that the whereabouts of the resting place of Seyit Rıza and his companions be revealed. Seyit Rıza's daughter Ağar said that she wanted to go to her father’s grave and utter a lament, adding that their people had been lined up and shot and set alight. “Our only crime was being Kurdish. They exiled us and burnt down our villages,” she said.

Ağar said she was nearly 90, and that before she died she wanted to know where her father and others slaughtered with him were buried. “They must tell us where they are,” she added.

‘A commission should be set up’

Hasan Erdoğan from the village of Doğanlı in Mazgirt district said he had been exiled to Uşak during the genocide. He said: “My 85-year-old grandfather Hüseyin Erdoğan and my 33-year-old father Ali Rıza Erdoğan were massacred along with 70 other people. I will never forget the sound of gunfire. How can I explain this… We were in Uşak for a long time until an amnesty was declared and we came home. We are still suffering."