Turkey has huge responsibilities for the long pending resolution of the humanitarian problem of the missing persons, Presidency Commissioner Fotis Fotiou said, speaking at an event for students of Kykkos A High School on the occasion of the World Declaration of Human Rights Day and on the topic "Missing Persons: The most tragic aspect of the 1974 Turkish invasion".
He said that despite the efforts through the Committee of Inquiry on Missing Persons, which operates under the supervision of the United Nations, despite also the official complaints and all our international interventions and actions for the final resolution of this humanitarian problem, in order to put to rest the souls of those who have perished, but also of those whose relatives are fatefully completing their own life cycle, 781 of the 1619 Greek Cypriots and Greeks whose names have been included in the original list of the missing persons of the Cypriot tragedy are still missing.
"All our strenuous efforts come up against the intransigent and inhuman attitude of Turkey, whose responsibilities are immense. With the obvious aim of covering up and silencing, if possible, its undeniable guilt for the disappearance of so many people, it is constantly putting up obstacles, hampering the investigative work to determine their fate. It places restrictions on exhumations, refuses to cooperate in pointing out the sites where the remains of the missing were forcibly moved en masse in order to conceal its own guilt, and also refuses to make the records of the Turkish army available to international investigators in an attempt to finally shine the light on the truth for which we have been struggling so hard for 47 years," he added.
If one looks at the history of the issue, as it has been repeatedly exposed in the Security Council, the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Committee, as well as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, he said, one will find a great deal of evidence that clearly demonstrates the extent of Turkey's responsibilities.
"The same in the history of efforts to launch the missing persons investigation effort. It was only 24 years after its establishment, in April 1981, that the Missing Persons' Committee, which includes a representative of the United Nations, was able to start its work," he stressed.
It should be noted in this regard, he continued, Turkey's non-participation in any of the relevant activities, as well as its avoidance of presenting its records on missing persons or prisoners of war as required by the Geneva Convention.
He said Turkey's lack of any cooperation was also underlined in decisions of European legal bodies which ruled that any violation concerning the rights of the missing persons and their families was the responsibility of Turkey because of its effective control over the occupied part of Cyprus.
"We do not disregard the work carried out so far by the Missing Persons' Committee, which is supported by the Government of the Republic of Cyprus in every possible way in order to investigate every case of a missing person, including the number of Turkish Cypriots whose names have been included in the relevant list," he said.
With sincerity and goodwill, our side, the Commissioner for the Presidency continued, is participating in the relevant efforts by facilitating the ICJ's investigative work and making available to the Commission all the information at its disposal.
He recalled that the issue of missing persons was raised by the first two inter-state applications submitted by Cyprus against Turkey in 1974 and 1975 to the European Commission of Human Rights. In its 1976 report, the Commission found Turkey responsible for violations of numerous articles of the European Convention. There was evidence of responsibility for the fate of persons in Turkish custody in life-threatening conditions. There was also the issue of the lack of information to the families of the missing persons.
In the historic judgment of the European Court of Human Rights on 10 May 2001 on Cyprus' fourth inter-State application against Turkey, he noted, the Court, by a vote of 16-1, with the one negative vote being that of the Turkish judge, found Turkey guilty of a number of serious violations of the Convention, relating to the right to life, the right to liberty and the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment.
In addition to the tragic aspect of the missing persons, he said. Fotiou, Turkey's flagrant violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as all other relevant decisions of the organizations and institutions of the international community, also concerns many other aspects of the consequences of the Turkish invasion, which were denounced in the four inter-state applications of Cyprus against Turkey.
"The ultimate Turkish objective through the tactics of ethnic cleansing that it followed and applied, the complete Turkification of the occupied part of the island with the destruction of every element of our cultural and religious heritage and the creation of an unrecognized state entity in violation of every concept of law. Cultural monuments, churches and generally priceless treasures of our heritage have been destroyed, confiscated or turned into entertainment venues," he added.
Source: CNA
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