The Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) has appealed to the public for additional information about the humanitarian issue of missing persons in Cyprus.
Greek Cypriot member at the CMP, Nestoras Nestoros, told CNA today that so far the CMP has identified the remains of 421 Greek Cypriots and 125 Turkish Cypriot missing persons. This number, he said, represents 27% of the total of 2001 missing persons.
In addition, he warned that if the CMP has no further information on possible burial sites, then by 2017 there will be a very limited number of remains to be identified.
He called on the public who might have information to contact his office on +357 22 400412 and assured everybody that the matter will be handled with strict confidentiality and information can be given anonymously.
Today, a delegation of the House of Representatives` Committee on Refugees visited the anthropological laboratory in the UN buffer zone in Nicosia, where they were informed about the work of CMP.
“We informed the members of the Parliament about the various aspects of the CMP program”, he told CNA.
He also said that next week he will visit again Greece, noting that the cooperation of CMP with Greece has been strengthened even more.
“We try to get additional information, to find people in Greece who might have any sort of information”, he pointed out.
As a result of the 1974 invasion, 1,619 Greek Cypriots were listed as missing, most of whom soldiers or reservists, who were captured in the battlefield. Many of those missing were last seen alive in the hands of the Turkish military. A further 41 more cases of Greek Cypriot missing persons have been added. These cases concern the period between 1963-1964, when inter-communal fighting broke out but none of them has been identified yet. The number of Turkish Cypriot missing since 1974 and 1963/64 stood at 503. A total of 1073 remains have been exhumed by the CMP, 546 of which have been identified with the DNA method (421 Greek Cypriots and 125 Turkish Cypriots).