We all left on the last day, all two hundred of us: thirty-two families in all. My family was the last. I was the priest: I had to make sure they all left safely.
They came in the evening: five Land-Rovers packed with troops. They did not apologise or give compensation: they simply burned the empty houses and destroyed the gardens.
A Suriani priest relates the story of the destruction of the Hassana village by Turkish soldiers in November 1993. Quoted from "From the Holy Mountain" by William Dalrymple
The villagers, 31 families comprising 199 persons in all, were offered neither alternative places for settlement nor compensation by the authorities.
Amnesty International: "Turkey: threat of forced eviction and destruction of Christian village: Hassana village"
I can smell the stench of ashes in the narrow streets and in the scorched gardens at the edge of the village. Rats zigzag on the terrace of the Turkish karakol; the small school next to it looks like a hollow carcass. I climb over heaped up rubble to what is left of the Mart Shmuni church in Upper Hassana. Swarms of flies are buzzing in the empty church.
Flemish journalist August Thiry about one of his visits to the ruins of Hassana