It is our duty to keep up effort to determine fate of Cyprus missing persons, says Aristotelous

Regardless of the difficulties and problems, we continue the fight to determine the fate of each of our missing people and to locate the remains of our fallen heroes Head of humanitarian affairs of missing Anna Aristotelous said, at the burial of additional remains of the 1974 hero, Reserve Lieutenant Ioannis Eliopoulos of ELDYK, who perished in August 1974, during the Turkish invasion.

She said that with the burial of additional remains of Greek heroes, we come to a closure of an open wound, an issue which was pending for half a century. Aristotelous added that it is our duty to bring an end to this ordeal and to inform the relatives so that they can proceed with the burial. The remains, she explained, for years have been in the Anthropological Laboratory of the Republic of Cyprus.

Τhe remains of Eliopoulos were repatriated by military aircraft.

She went on to say that Eliopoulos’ sacrifice as well as the ones of all of soldiers that heroically lost their lives in the summer of 1974 constitute a promise on behalf of all of us to carry on the struggle and prove that their sacrifice will not go to waste.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied 37% of its territory. Since then, the fate of hundreds of people remains unknown.

A Committee on Missing Persons has been established, upon agreement between the leaders of the two communities, with the scope of exhuming, identifying and returning to their relatives the remains of 492 Turkish Cypriots and 1,510 Greek Cypriots, who went missing during the inter-communal fighting of 1963-1964 and in 1974.