The Committee on Missing Persons issued today a press release in which it clarifies a number of issues as regards various reports “containing speculation about the alleged relocation of remains from an ongoing excavation conducted by the Committee on Missing Persons in Lapithos/Lapta”.
“For the sake of clarity and with due respect to the families of the missing persons, the CMP would like to clarify that the excavation in the area in question started in October 2014 and has not been completed yet”, the press release says.
It adds that “although a number of fragmented skeletal remains were located on the surface at the site, there are no scientific findings yet indicating the existence of a burial site. Consequently, no assumptions regarding a possible relocation can be made at this stage”.
Furthermore, the CMP notes that the excavation of the entire site will likely require several more months.
As a result of the 1974 Turkish invasion against Cyprus, 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).
Only 27% of all missing persons have been identified so far.
The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) is a bi-communal body established in 1981 by the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities with the participation of the United Nations. Following the establishment of an agreed list of missing persons, the CMP’s objective is to recover, identify, and return to their families, the remains of 2001 persons (502 Turkish Cypriots and 1,493 Greek Cypriots) who went missing.
The CMP employs a bi-communal forensic team of more than 60 Cypriot archeologists, anthropologists and geneticists, who conduct excavations throughout the island and anthropological and genetic analyses of remains at the CMP Anthropological Laboratory.