We will never accept the partition of our country, Minister of Communications and Works Efthymios Flourntzou has said.
Flourentzou was addressing a memorial service to commemorate the missing person Lefteris Avraam at the village of Livadia in Larnaca District.
Our will to continue the struggle to achieve a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions and internationally accepted principles remains stable, he noted.
“We will never accept the division of our country”, he stressed.
Flourentzou pointed out that apportioning blame and serving any interests is not the way to build unity.
Unity can be built on the basis of principles and the correct evaluation of developments via a constructive dialogue and without bias, he added.
“Our duty to those who perished makes it imperative to continue the struggle for the reunification of Cyprus”, he said.
Avraam was declared missing during the second phase of the Turkish invasion of 1974, which resulted in the occupation of Cyprus’ northern third.
His parents, Georgios and Avgousta, died before they were able to find what had happened to him.
His remains were discovered in 2007 in a group grave in the Turkish Cypriot village Agia in the framework of the work done by the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus.
They were identified using the method of DNA and his funeral took place at Livadia in September 2011.
As a result of the Turkish invasion of 1974, 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.
According the latest figures released in July 2012, the remains of 330 missing individuals – 264 Greek Cypriots and 66 Turkish Cypriots – have been returned to their families for proper burial.
