The Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) in Cyprus shares its experience and know-how with countries that have missing persons and want to implement a project for the exhumation, identification and return of remains.
This is taking palce at a request submitted to the Committee by the Red Cross.
To this end, a decision-makers delegation from Azerbaijan is currently visiting Cyprus, while decision-makers from Armenia will visit the island next week.
Nestoras Nestoros, the Greek Cypriot member of CMP, has told CNA that the Committee shares its experience with decision-makers and educates scientists from other countries, in the framework of its strategic plan for 2017-2020.
“The Red Cross has asked us to offer our experience and know-how to countries with missing persons,” Nestoros said, adding that delegations from Iraq, Iran and Lebanon have already visited the island.
A mission of decision-makers from Azerbaijan is currently here and had meetings with the members of the Committee and CMP experts, he said, noting that they will visit excavation sites, the anthropological lab and they will be briefed on the support given to the affected families.
“We explained to them how the project operates and they will see how the various phases of the project are implemented so that later on they will discuss and decide how to proceed with the implementation of their own project,” he told CNA.
Asked about CMP`s four-year strategic plan, he noted that “we have tried to identify inefficiencies at the various phases of the Committee`s project and improve the way every phase is implemented – the investigations, the excavations, the anthropological and genetic tests etc.”
“The four-year strategic plan concerns concrete actions – such as the use of geophysical systems and archive digitization – to improve the project`s results” so that answers are given to the families the soonest possible, he added. The objective, he noted, is to improve and accelerate the work carried out.
Referring to the sites where excavations are currently underway, Nestoros said these are Morphou cemetery, Angastina, Arsos, Pentagia, Lapithos, Famagusta, Ayios Ilarionas, Tseri and Koutrafas. He added that until now remains have been located in Morphou cemetery, Agastina and Ayios Ilarionas.
Nestoros also noted that after the completion of the excavations that took place in 10 military zones in Cyprus` northern Turkish occupied areas during 2016, excavations will be carried out during 2017 in another 10 military zones in the occupied areas. He added that “for the time being there was not result” from these excavations.
CMP is a bi-communal body established in 1981 by the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and the 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 during the inter-communal fighting of 1963 to 1964 and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
According to CMP figures, the remains of 1192 people were exhumed by the end of 2016. Seven hundred forty missing persons were identified by December 31st, 2016.