President Nikos Christodoulides has ranked the issue of Cyprus’ missing persons among his top priorities, Humanitarian Affairs Commissioner Anna Aristotelous said on Sunday at a church ceremony for the fall in village of Katokopia.
She added that he supports in practice the effort to determine their fate and is standing by the families of the missing and fallen.
Aristotelous said that Katokopia, like so many other communities, paid a heavy price in the tragic days of the Turkish invasion of the island. She added: “It is our debt to carry on the struggle to return to our villages and towns.”
According to Aristotelous, the sacrifices of the fallen and their high sense of duty to the homeland, are a beacon for “us to continue to work tirelessly for the reunification of our country”.
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.
