I thank you for giving me the floor.
I am the Turkish Cypriot member of the Committee on Missing
Persons in Cyprus (CMP) but I do not appear before you today in that capacity.
I am here to present to the Delegates if I may, the facts concerning the issue
of missing persons in Cyprus and the reasons for the failure of the CMP so far
to effectively deal with the issue.
It is unfortunate that this tragic issue has not been
resolved despite all efforts of the UN supported mechanism of the Committee on
Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) which was set up in 1981, pursuant to UN
General Assembly Resolutions of 1977 and 1978 followed by negotiations between
the two sides under the auspices of the UN Secretary General and with the
assistance of the ICRC.
In regard to this issue, it is important to remember the
following basic facts:
1. There are 500 Turkish Cypriot missing persons and 1493
Greek Cypriot missing persons whose cases have been submitted to the CMP.
The figure of 1493 for the Greek Cypriots includes the names of 113 persons
who have been accepted by the Greek Cypriot as being "probably
dead"; includes also the names of 71 mainland Greek Army personnel who
had fought in Cyprus as well as the names of 13 Greek Cypriots on the
missing persons list whose remains have recently been exhumed and identified
in the South. Thus, the true figure of Greek Cypriots claimed to be missing
is 1296.
2. All the Turkish Cypriot missing persons are innocent
civilians, 26 % of whom are women and children. Of the Greek Cypriots, about
70 % are military personnel
3. 211 of the Turkish Cypriots disappeared in 1963-1964
following Greek Cypriot armed attacks on the Turkish Cypriot community.
There are 43 Greek Cypriots missing from that period, but for some reasons
the cases of these have not been brought up by the Greek Cypriot side
despite public demands for action by the relatives of these people.
4. As the events in 1974 which gave rise again to the
issue of missing persons i.e the anti-Makarios coup of 15 July 1974 which
lasted for 5 days and nights and the Turkish Intervention of 20 July,
followed each other so immediately, it has not been possible to clearly
separate the casualties of the two events. Proof of this is the fact that,
the Coup casualties, dead or alive, have not yet been made public. I may
refer in this respect to Father Tsestos' disclosure to Ta Nea newspaper of
28.02.1976 to the effect that, he had been forced at gun point to bury 127
bodies brought to him by a Greek Army officer in a lorry, without waiting
for identification by the relatives. Another source of information is the
Cyprus Mail report of 22 November 1992 entitled "Coup mass burials
-witness dead" in which it was stated that Antonios Stilianu who
had just died had disclosed before his death that he had been forced by
Greek officers to bury almost 300 victims of the conflict at the Lakatamia
cemetery using his own bulldozers.
We are ready and willing to cooperate in the resolution of
this issue free from any political exploitation and in a humanitarian spirit
and would like to suggest a modality in this respect.
The modality is the CMP which was set up in 1981 and
comprises one representative each of the two communities in Cyprus and a
prominent humanitarian person nominated by the ICRC and appointed by the UN
Secretary General with a clear mandate to investigate fully in order to
establish the fate of every person reported to it as missing in Cyprus with a
view to determining whether he or she is alive or dead and in the former event
to obtain his/hers release and in the latter event to inform the family
concerned. This could be followed at the appropriate time by search for burial
places and exhumations for identification.
We feel that the CMP is an appropriate mechanism and can be
made effective to resolve the issue of all the missing persons, Turkish
Cypriot as well as Greek Cypriot, provided a genuine cooperation within the
Committee can be secured.
Mr. Chairman,
Please permit me to inform the honorable Delegates of the
reasons for the failure of the CMP to be effective so far.
I wish to start with a quotation from the leading article
of the Sunday Mail, a prominent Greek Cypriot newspaper, of 7 November 1999.
The article which is headed "The exploitation of a humanitarian
issue" and which offered a critical comment following the shock discovery
of yet another Greek Cypriot soldier who though killed in fighting and buried,
a fact which was known to his comrades and others, had been knowingly included
in the Greek Cypriot missing persons list. After asking the question "how
many more such cases will surface" continues its comment: (quote)
"No matter how high the number is, it will not be a surprise, because
this will be a direct result of a deliberate state policy that
saw the issue of the missing as a propaganda tool against
Turkey- the higher the number the more effective the propaganda, was the
prevailing view. The black-clad mothers clasping pictures of their loved ones
gave added dramatic effect to anti-occupation demonstrations. No one seemed to
feel any pressure to try to resolve a single case, with officialdom and the
politicians always blaming the unco-operative Turks for the lack of progress.
It was our side which always used the issue for propaganda purposes, while at
the same time maintaining that it was a humanitarian matter." (unquote)
The basis of this inhumane policy was laid down by the late
Archibishop Makarios soon after 1974 and was carried on militantly for years
until the end of the Kipriyanu administration, by Father Hristoforos. In
support, I wish to quote former Greek Cypriot Attorney General Mr. Michael
Triandafilledes who made the following statement as published by Alithia
newspaper of 14.10.1995. (quote) "As far as I can remember the issue of
informing the families of missing persons for whom there was evidence that
they were dead was never raised by anybody. Such suggestions were not made
even by the Organizations of the Relatives of Greek Cypriot Missing Persons
who were taking part in the meetings. The policy followed at the time was that
it made no difference whether a missing person was dead or alive. This was
laid down by Archibishop Makarios at a general meeting for the missing held in
about 1975-1976." (unquote)
A more dramatic statement came from a journalist, Mr. Takis
Agathocleous who had apparently taken part in the burial of dead soldiers in
1974. In an article he wrote in Althia newspaper on 14.10.1995 he stated as
follows;
(quote)
"We got a bulldozer and buried the dead in a huge
crater created by the bombs. We collected the identification of those who had
them, which we gave to some military men after a few days, but because of the
war situation we doubt if they kept them. Personally I do not remember how
many exactly I buried.
I left Cyprus after 1974 for a number of years and when I
returned in 1982 took up journalism and as there was great agitation about the
exact number of missing persons, I researched into the subject, but no
responsible officer was ever interested in facts. They simply asked me to go
to an office which was occupied then with the issue of the missing where they
advised me not to continue because it was not in our national interest that
those whom they had listed as missing should be proved to have died.
Just like today, that is to say it is now revealed that
those responsible knew all these years that hundreds of the missing were dead
but for national reasons, so to speak, it was kept a secret and they were
presented as missing." (unquote)
It was in order to maintain the myth of "1619 missing
persons" that the list, including many dead persons, was kept secret
until recently so that it could not be screened by the relatives concerned or
the Greek Cypriot people.
Androulla Palma's dramatic story is also a sad reflection
on the way the issue of Greek Cypriot missing persons has been managed. Even
though her husband was known to have been killed and buried in 1974 she was
fooled to believe he was alive and captive in Turkey and she was used for
years for propaganda against Turkey in and outside Cyprus. The Cyprus Weekly
chief editor George Lanitis, a prominent Greek Cypriot journalist who was
commissioned in 1981 by an American newspaper to compile a report on Cyprus on
learning the truth in 1998 condemned in the strongest terms those responsible
and writing in his newspaper dated 1-7 May, 1998 under the heading
"Playing with Human Pain" expressed his anger with the following
words: "She was fooled, I was fooled and many other journalists were
fooled and we fooled our readers. I apologize. I acted like the rest of them,
bone fide."
Mrs. Palma retained a lawyer last year to sue those
responsible for one million pounds sterling compensation for (quote) "a
generation of what they term psychological trauma and inhuman treatment at the
hands of the Republic." (unquote) (Sunday Mail, 15.07.2001)
Mr. Chairman, I am sure it is clear from the facts I have
stated so far that the CMP mechanism itself is not at fault for being
ineffective in resolving the issue of missing persons in Cyprus. It could and
would have succeeded in completing its mandate long ago as provided for in
Article 13 of its agreed Terms of Reference.
It will not be unreasonable to deduce from the foregoing
that the Greek Cypriot side acted the way it has in order to be able
unilaterally to declare the CMP ineffective as a justification for taking the
issue to the international fora where the Turkish Cypriot side is not
represented and to the European Court of Human Rights.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to make reference to one or two
other cases in order to shed further light on the true nature and complexity
of the issue.
On 4 January 1990, Mr. Semi Bora, Turkish Cypriot Mayor of
Lefkoşa (Northern Nicosia) whose father, Mr. Şahap Semi, then a government
district inspector, disappeared in the Larnaca Greek Cypriot police station on
26 December 1963, feeling frustrated by the delay in hearing from the CMP
officially about his missing father's fate asked for the help of Amnesty
International. The reply he received from the Amnesty International dated 8
August 1991 was briefly as follows:
(quote) "I am writing to inform you that we have now
received a reply from the Undersecretary to President Vasiliu to our inquiries
about your father. I am afraid that his answer sheds no further light on your
father's fate but merely confirms that his case was submitted to the CMP in
1989, that the Committee is currently investigating his case, that the Greek
Cypriot member had submitted a preliminary report on this investigation, that
he will be submitting a further one soon and that once the investigation is
completed and the decision is taken by the CMP, your family will be informed
accordingly." (unquote)
Mr. Chairman,
No further report has been submitted to the CMP by the
Greek Cypriot side in this case.
The families of other Turkish Cypriots whose relatives
disappeared in the hands of Greek Cypriot police under similar circumstances,
received similar response from the Amnesty International.
The case of Lt Colonel Stylianos Kalpourtzis, a mainland
Greek Army Officer whose name appears on the Greek Cypriot missing persons
list, was submitted to the CMP for investigation in 1995. Investigations by
the Turkish Cypriot side established that he was killed in combat, while
leading a Greek Cypriot army battalion in an attack against the Turkish
Cypriot side between Nicosia and Kyrenia in July 1974. A Turkish Cypriot
fighter who was in command of the
Turkish Cypriot forces which was defending the area under
attack gave convincing direct evidence to the CMP that he had shot Kalpourtzis
himself during the fighting. However, this case could not be concluded by the
CMP, which can only take decisions unanimously, because the Greek Cypriot
member insisted on the discovery of physical remains before he would agree for
the file of this person to be closed.
A former Greek Cypriot National Guard Sergeant, Yannakis
Charalambous, wrote about his experiences in the war in Cyprus in the
October-December 2001 issue of a Greek Cypriot periodical called Karpasia
which provides proof of yet another instance of falsification of statements in
regard to missing persons. He wrote, in brief: (quote) "We were about 20
soldiers in the Kantara region. We shot and killed three Turkish soldiers and
our epic story started there and then. They began to search for us everywhere.
We split into groups and began to plan our escape. We were well armed and
ready to fight it out. Five of our comrades started to run but the Turks shot
dead two of them and arrested the remaining three. After staying there for two
days, we came out of the cave and near the carob trees we saw the graves of
our two comrades who had been shot dead. Eventually, we too like some of our
other comrades were captured and taken to Famagusta where we were eventually
freed" (unquote).
The two Greek Cypriot soldiers who had been shot dead by
the Turkish troops when the latter were attacked have been reported to the CMP
as missing persons presumably captured by the Turkish Army and the witness
testifying to the disappearances is the very ex sergeant who wrote the recent
article in the periodical referred to above.
As a last case I would like to quote from pages 184-185 of
AKEL (Greek Cypriot Communist Party) publication "Chronicle of The
Contemporary
Tragedy of Cyprus : July-August 1974" which describes
an act of treachery within a Greek Cypriot National Guard Unit under a Greek
mainland army officer during an attack against the Turkish Cypriot areas.
(Quote) "Even during the war when we had to face the invader, Junta
officers were still planning to murder pro-Makarios or leftist soldiers. A
pro-Grivas soldier was injured in the battle at Dhikomo and Comrade Christofis
Zembylas from Kokkinotrimithia went to help him. The former, then, confessed
to Zembylas that he had been approached by Captain M. who had asked him to try
and shoot Zembyla" (unquote)".
If Captain M., the Greek Army Officer commanding the Unit
had managed to get the pro-Makarios soldier killed by the pro Junta soldier
during the attack, the dead soldier would no doubt have been buried on the
spot and subsequently reported as "missing, presumed captured by the
Turks.
Mr. Chairman,
The Secretary General of the UN took a very close interest
in the work of the CMP particularly since 1990 and has always urged both sides
to cooperate to ensure its success and in 1996 made concrete suggestions in
the form of five modalities which, in his opinion, would help the process
succeed.
The special agreement between the two leaders on 31 July
1997 raised hopes of the vigorous activation of the CMP and led to the
appointment on 15 June 1998 by the Secretary General of Ambassador Jean Pierre
Ritter, nominated by the ICRC, as the new Third Member. Efforts to reactivate
the CMP within its agreed Terms of Reference and other agreed documents
culminating in Ambassador Ritter's 30.9.1998 written proposals proved also
unfruitful, because his well
considered report was rejected by the Greek Cypriot side
who would not agree to allow the CMP to resume its work on the basis
originally agreed and continued to insist on the tracing of burial places and
recovery of remains before any case could be concluded even though full
investigations were made and the fate of the person concerned established.
The special agreement of 31.07.1997 which aimed at securing
cooperation of the Greek Cypriot side failed to secure the desired result
because they refused to divulge the identities and secret burial places of
Greek Cypriots who had been killed during the intra Greek Cypriot civil war
(coup 15-20 July 1974). Without first dealing with this aspect of the problem,
it would not be possible to ascertain the missing relating to the Coup period
and those relating to the post-20 July 1974 events.
The last attempt by the UN Secretary General to secure the
resumption of its work by the CMP was his letter dated 24.05.2000 addressed to
the two leaders asking them to:
A. remove the obstacles preventing the resumption of the
investigative work of the CMP
and
B. commit themselves genuinely to reach a consensus for the
fulfillment of the five modalities contained in the letter of the Secretary
General dated 4.12.1996.
