Establishing the fate of each and every missing person remains a top priority, President of the House of Representatives Yiannakis Omirou has said in a written statement on the issue of missing persons in the context of the 29th Marathon of Love for Missing Persons.

Omirou notes that the humanitarian issue of missing persons, affecting not just their relatives for more that 40 years, is the most tragic aspect of the Cyprus problem.

The internationally established obligation of all parties involved in any conflict to contribute to resolving issues such as the missing persons issue, in the case of Cyprus, unfortunately, runs into Turkey’s intransigence and unwillingness, he adds.

He also says that both the House and all governments have repeatedly complained and appealed to international institutions and organizations, in order to persuade Turkey to allow access to information and data it possesses, contributing actively to the solution of the problem of missing persons.

The House Speaker notes in his statement that “Turkey must respect the decisions and resolutions of international and European organizations and courts which show that it has continuously violated articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, calling it to comply with these decisions and stop being indifferent in a provocative and unacceptable manner.”

“In recent years, thanks to the tireless efforts of a team of specialists operating within the terms of reference of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, dozens of missing persons have been found during exhumations and identified through DNA method and their remains were delivered to their families for burial.”

Nonetheless, he continues, “the fate of most of the missing remains undetermined, while questions on how and under what circumstances they lost their lives remains unanswered.”

As a result of the Turkish invasion, 1,619 Greek Cypriots were listed as missing, most of whom soldiers or reservists, who were captured in 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 stood at 503.

To date, a total of 1073 remains have been exhumed by the CMP, 491 of which have been identified with the DNA method (366 Greek Cypriots and 125 Turkish Cypriots).