Relatives of missing persons in Cyprus have called on Turkey to make available information it is withholding on missing persons, to help establish their fate.
“Turkey must cooperate in issues concerning information about missing persons in Cyprus, because a lot of information is in the hands of the Turkish military and the Turkish government alone,” General Secretary of the Relatives of Missing Persons Committee Nicos Theodosiou said here today.
Speaking after a meeting with President Nicos Anastasiades, he described as “a fiasco” an investigation commission set up by Turkey in Cyprus’ Turkish occupied areas to which relatives of missing persons are invited to address themselves.
He noted that Turkey set up this commission consisting of so-called policemen “to prove to the European Court of Human Rights that it implements its decision for substantial search into the fate of missing persons.”
“We believe that relatives do not need to apply to this commission because the information they seek is included in dossiers which the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) has in its possession, to which Turkey has access,” he added.
He said that the strategy on the issue of missing persons must be reviewed “to see how we can proceed in the right way.”
Responding to a question, he said that results from DNA tests on remains exhumed in the framework of the CMP mandate are now more quickly processed than in the past, through the processes followed by the ICMP.
“We must see how these processes can be improved in connection with the anthropological lab and the exhumation teams,” he added.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. As a result of the invasion, 1619 Greek-Cypriots were listed as missing, most of whom soldiers or reservists, who were captured in the battlefield. Among them, however, were many civilians, women and children, arrested by the Turkish invasion troops and Turkish-Cypriot paramilitary groups, within the area controlled by the Turkish army after the end of hostilities and far away from 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 recently 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 stands at 503.