From The National Post and Alliance Defense Fund:
Muslims forced Canadian envoy's grave removal
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TwitterLinkedInDiggBuzzEmail.Tamsin McMahon, National Post · Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2010
The remains of a Canadian diplomat buried in Turkey were reportedly forcibly removed from a local cemetery after a prominent Muslim family said they weren't comfortable praying next to a Christian grave.
Hans-Joachim Himmelsbach, 65, a retired trade commissioner from Vancouver who was living in Turkey, died about three weeks ago after suffering a blood clot to his brain while he was recovering from a throat operation, his stepfather, Heinz Koletzko, said in an interview.
Mr. Himmelsbach was buried in a Christian ceremony at a local cemetery in Bodrum, a tourist resort community on Turkey's south Aegean coast. Mr. Himmelsbach's family obtained permission from the municipality for a priest to perform the ceremony, Mr. Koletzko said, as is required in Turkey for religious groups not officially recognized by the state. But his wife, Ilknur Himmelsbach, a Turkish citizen, told the Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review that Mr. Himmelsbach's grave was recently moved against her wishes to a remote area of the cemetery at the request of a local Muslim businessman who felt Mr. Himmelsbach was buried too close to the family plot. "If they told me this incident was going to happen 30 years ago, I wouldn't have believed them," Ms. Himmelsbach told the newspaper. "My husband doesn't deserve this. He moved to Turkey to make me happy."
Sinan Dayioglu, described by the paper as a businessman belonging to "one of Bodrum's leading families," said he objected to the fact that Mr. Himmelsbach had been buried next to his mother and his cousin. "In the world, people having different beliefs are separated with walls or wires, even though they are in the same cemetery," Mr. Dayioglu told the paper. "This is for the respect of worship and belief."
Mr. Himmelsbach was described in the 2001 book From Peacekeeping to Peacemaking: Canada's Response to the Yugoslav Crisis as the former deputy director of the Central and Eastern European Trade Development Division of Canada's foreign affairs department with a specialty in Yugoslavia. He retired nearly 10 years ago and spent his time alternating between his home in Vancouver and Turkey, Mr. Koletzko said, but was looking forward to building a life in Turkey with his wife and 26-year-old daughter, a cellist who had been studying in Berlin. "It was his wish to be buried there," he said. "He was very well-liked in the community. He was very intelligent and he spoke quite a few languages. He also spoke Turkish. They called him 'The Professor' there."
Despite its long-standing secular leanings, predominantly Sunni Muslim Turkey has been experiencing an upswing in religious violence aimed at non-Muslims in recent years, said Paul Marshall, author of Religious Freedom in the World.
In May, a Roman Catholic bishop was stabbed to death by his driver; in 2007, a Catholic priest was stabbed by a 17-year-old who was visiting his church. That same year, two Turkish Protestants and a German national were tortured to death inside their Bible publishing house. In 2006, a 16-year-old shot a Catholic priest to death as he prayed in his church, saying he was incensed at the publication earlier that year of cartoons in European newspapers depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
tmcmahon@nationalpost.com
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Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/Muslims+forced+Canadian+envoy+grave+removal/3978586/story.html#ixzz18FVsUaLF
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