From the first assessment of the photos that have seen the light of day, the photos concern missing persons, said today the Commissioner for the Presidency, Fotis Fotiou.
In a statement to journalists at the Presidential residence in Troodos, the Commissioner of the Presidency, asked to comment on the issue of the photos that have seen the light of day in recent days and are believed to depict missing persons from the Turkish invasion, said that "all information, all testimonies are always evaluated by the competent services of the state and are evaluated in the best possible way.
It appears from the first assessment that has been made that these photos belong to missing persons and this confirms once again the brutality of the occupation regime and the brutality of Attila, how these compatriots have been executed. I call once again on all our fellow Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots whatever information they have to give us.
Even the smallest information, the smallest testimony, the most insignificant testimony can be very important for us and for the Missing Persons' Committee. But what is of immense importance is for the international community to see why what is happening is a disgrace. There cannot be all this sensitivity with the mass graves, the missing persons that we have at the moment in the war in Ukraine, and rightly so, and there is this sensitivity, and for 48 years the same concern cannot be shown for our own missing persons. Forty-eight years later and we are still looking for more than 750 of our missing persons. Time, of course, is our great enemy and you understand that the results of the Missing Persons' Committee in recent years are alarming and we ask the international community, the UN where the ICRC programme is under the auspices of the Organisation, the European Union itself which is the main sponsor of the ICRC programme, to put the appropriate pressure on the occupying power to cooperate in solving a wholly humanitarian problem.
The issue of the missing persons is not political, it is humanitarian. You must know that all, most, most of the parents have passed away, and now the brothers and sisters and spouses are leaving. You understand where we are 48 years later. What we have seen in the latest pictures as well as other testimonies we have are war crimes and one could blame Turkey and the international community should do so for these war crimes. What we will continue to do is to investigate all this information with the hope that we will identify the burial sites of these people because that is the important thing, to identify the burial sites, the mass graves after the collections of our dead at that time and certainly after the second great crime of the occupying power which was the movement of the bones."
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(PM/EP/SX)
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