Sibel Ali was looking forward to giving birth to her son, Aydin. But several weeks before he was due to arrive, the heavily pregnant woman was rushed to hospital with a viral infection.
The Taylors Hill resident hadn’t felt Aydin move all morning. A sonographer at the Epworth Freemasons hospital broke the bad news – there was no heartbeat.
Aydin was delivered stillborn on February 3. He was buried at the Fawkner Memorial Park on February 11.
“We wanted a proper burial site for him,” Ms Ali said. “We were given the option to bury Aydin in a mass [baby] grave but that wasn’t an option for us – we wanted a proper grave for him.
“We were given the option of a smaller size grave … we specifically asked if monuments could be erected, and they said, ‘Yes’.”
Upon making payment for the plot, Ms Ali says she was given details of stonemasons in the area. But when the family was ready to erect a headstone for their son, Ms Ali and her husband, Cemil, were told monuments weren’t allowed in the section where Aydin was buried.
After to-ing and fro-ing, Ms Ali, a Muslim, says Fawkner Memorial Park employees told her monuments weren’t allowed in that section due to religious reasons – despite thousands of Muslims being buried there and their graves having headstones.
“It’s a traumatising time as it is and this just makes things more stressful,” Ms Ali said.
“I’m not asking for very much – I’m just asking for us to be allowed to have a resting place for our son.
“What we’ve been given – the option to have a plaque – is basically something that really has no value to us.”
Jacqui Weatherill, chief executive of Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust that manages Fawkner Memorial Park, said that while families were allowed to erect monuments in “many areas” of the cemetery, some sections had been allocated as no-monument areas.
“The area the family chose in this instance is a no-monument section,” she said. “It was established many years ago in response to consultation with community leaders.”
WhenStar Weekly asked about documents that outline which sections have been declared as no-monument areas, a trust spokeswoman said: “Information about different sections, memorials, burials, etc across the 19 sites we manage is varied and as such, not written explicitly in literature.”
