Mound of Makedonitissa - Monday, 9 May 2022
Your Eminence, Metropolitan of Kyrenia,
Honorable Chairman of the Committee of Occupied Municipalities,
Honorable mayors of Kyrenia province,
Honorable Chief of the National Guard,
Honorable Commander of ELDYK,
Honorable Deputy Mayor of Kyrenia,
Honourable chairmen of the associations of the occupied communities of Famagusta, Nicosia and Kyrenia,
Honourable chairman of the Organization of Relatives of Undeclared POWs and Missing Persons,
Honourable mayors and representatives of the associations of Kyrenia,
Respected Relatives of Missing Persons,
Friends of Kyrenia,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Every year, the planet celebrates and honours the womb of the world, the root of civilisation, the source of life. Significantly, Mother's Day is commemorated in the heart of spring, bursting with light, colour and life... which insists on resisting death.
Mother's Day is, unfortunately for many women, their own martyrdom of repeated crucifixion. Every year, on a day like this, the mother of the missing person does not celebrate. Every day the mother of the missing person lives her own drama captive to ignorance. How can she celebrate when her entrails are missing? When the source of her motherhood whose umbilical cord was violently, traumatically cut is missing. The celebration of life constitutes for her nothing but a souvenir of loss and death.
How can you celebrate, mother, you who are expecting your child? What else remains for you, mother, but to gaze blackly at the horizon, under the hot Cypriot sun, with the hope of a tiny whisper of existence. In your silent and heartfelt face is condensed the drama of all the relatives of those who are missing. At your feet, their names, small tributes of lament and search, for drama, beyond its tragic universality, has a name and a face.
Ladies and gentlemen,
How can the human mind truly grasp the magnitude of this drama? As much as the mind makes diligent and agonizing efforts, I truly feel that no one who has not experienced the agonizing doubt of losing loved ones can feel what the relatives of our missing persons have been going through for 48 years now. For these people it seems like their lives were put on hold. There are no graves to mourn... no bones to bury. And they have a right to know the truth.
This horrific war crime is one of the most tragic aspects of our country's history. The initiatives of the Cypriot state, but above all the stubbornness and militancy of the organised groups of the relatives of the missing contributed decisively to the internationalisation of the problem, to its promotion in international forums and organisations, with the aim of Turkey assuming responsibility and substantial cooperation in providing evidence on the fate of the missing persons.
Despite Ankara's criminally unwilling and defiantly indifferent attitude towards a series of UN and Council of Europe resolutions, as well as a series of condemnatory decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the unremitting and persistent struggles of the relatives of the missing persons have led to the recognition of the issue as a humanitarian one and the achievement of progress in many areas. The commencement of exhumation operations in both the liberated and occupied territories in 2006 by the Commission of Inquiry on Missing Persons represents a humanitarian achievement of the relatives' struggles of the highest order. To date, a significant number of exhumations have taken place within the zones of the occupying power, resulting in the identification and return of remains to relatives.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today we pay tribute to all the mothers of the 1974 tragedy, many of whom left in pain, burned to death with the sadness of loss on their lips. At the same time, we pay tribute to the mothers of the whole world who continue to gaze at the horizon with the hope of a tiny whisper of existence.
In conclusion, I would like to send a clear message to the relatives of our missing persons, that I personally will not stop for a moment and at every opportunity to raise this issue in all meetings with my counterparts as well as with other foreign officials in order to exert international pressure on Turkey, through information and awareness-raising.
Respected relatives of the missing persons,
Your anguish, which grows with the passage of time, is also ours. Your supreme struggle, defending the inalienable right of every family, every mother, to be informed of the fate of their loved one with official and documentary evidence, is also ours. You are not alone, we will fight with you until our last missing person is found. This is what our duty dictates, this is what our soul dictates.
(Text as sent from the House of Representatives)
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs PIO
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