Fourteen Turkish Cypriot children murdered by the Eoka B Greek Cypriot paramilitary organisation in 1974 were buried in the north on Saturday,

The remains of the 14 children, seven girls and seven boys, were found in mass graves during excavations in the village of Maratha.

Their identities were confirmed through DNA tests, 46 years after the massacre. It was determined that the youngest of the children was only 4 months old while the oldest was 15.

The remains of 89 people found in the grave belonged to residents of the villages of Aloa, Sandalaris and Maratha, all in the district of Famagusta.

The youngest children, two girls, were four and six months old. The oldest was a boy, 15. Four of the 14 buried on Saturday were siblings aged 3, 6, 9 and 11. Three other children were also siblings.

The mass grave had been excavated in three phases between October 14, 2015 and February 5, 2016.

In total, 126 children and women were murdered by the paramilitaries on August 14, 1974.

The villages of Sandalaris, Maratha and Aloda, inhabited entirely by Turkish Cypriots, were located next to each other in the Famagusta district.

It is believed that the shooters came from the neighbouring village of Peristeronopigi.

The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP), established in 1981 by an agreement between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities with the backing of the U.N., is tasked with finding people that went missing during the conflicts in the 1960s and 1970s.

The day before yesterday the funeral of the 14 children – aged from 4 months to 15 years – who were murdered in August 1974 by members of the fascists of EOKA B in the Turkish Cypriot villages of Aloa, Sandalaris and Maratha reminds us of yet another dark page in our homeland’s history, namely the massacres of Turkish Cypriot women and children by the fascists of EOKA B. AKEL expresses its sincere condolences to the families of the children.

The attempt by the Greek Cypriot extreme-right to silence or downplay the terrible crimes, that it is responsible for, is both provocative and hypocritical, as is, respectively, the attempt by the Turkish Cypriot chauvinist extreme-right to exploit the massacres in order to justify the occupation and to convince of the supposedly impossible coexistence of the two communities.
History has written that the fascists in the two communities were the best instruments serving the plans for the partition of Cyprus, which culminated in the coup d’état, the invasion and occupation of Turkey and the atrocities that were committed by the Turkish army. It was the people who paid the price with their own blood and uprooting becoming refugees.

For AKEL, there is no collective responsibility of the Greek Cypriot community for the crimes committed by the Greek Cypriot fascists, as there is no collective responsibility of the Turkish Cypriot community for corresponding crimes committed. However, there is a responsibility of all Cypriots to demand the investigation of all the horrific crimes that were committed against our people, regardless of the nationality of the murderers and their victims. There is an enduring responsibility and obligation to fight chauvinism, to know the whole truth about the tragedy our people suffered, to teach it to the coming generations and to struggle so that these crimes must never happen again.