Overall, 691 Greek Cypriots who went missing during the Turkish invasion are not being sought by the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) and, by extension, not by the Republic of Cyprus either.
The Republic of Cyprus might have “buried” them for possibly two reasons:
Firstly, there may have been pressure from the Turkish side to reduce the number of missing persons.
Secondly, there might be information, evidence, or testimonies indicating that these individuals were killed or executed during hostilities.
The second reason relates to the credibility of the Greek Cypriot side in trying to ascertain the fate of the missing persons.
However, these individuals (565 who fell during the invasion and 126 removed from the initial list of 1,619 missing persons) are not even being sought. Any bones found belonging to these two categories were discovered accidentally during excavations by the CMP to find missing persons.
The issue of the 565 fallen and the 126 removed from the missing persons list was raised in a recent session of the parliamentary committee on Refugees and Missing Persons.
In a document submitted, which had been sent by the Office of the Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs in 2000 to the relatives of the missing, it was stated:
“According to a decision of the Council of Ministers dated 4/5/2000, concerning the issue of missing/fallen persons of 1974, among other things, it was decided that information about the 126 individuals, whose cases were on the missing persons list but were not submitted for investigation to the CMP.”
“Be informed,” the information continued, “that following a study of the contents of the missing person’s file by the special committee, which included two committees of relatives of missing persons, chaired by the Attorney General of the Republic in September 1995, a decision was made not to submit the case for investigation to the CMP. In this specific case, the testimony obtained is such that it does not justify its search by the Turkish side,” concluded the information, which was identical for all cases.
Marios Pagonis, brother of Michalis Pagonis, who was included in the list of 126, among other things, mentioned the following, which paints a picture of what the family has experienced during the search for the missing person (from the list of 126).
“During the days of the war, our parents would take a taxi every day to search for our brother. There was information that on July 19, 1974, our brother (who was a resident of Famagusta) was presented at the 11th Regular Regiment, where our parents visited him. Since then, we haven’t seen Michalis. In 2000, the Committee on Missing Persons informed us that Michalis was listed among the 126, reasoning that there was no testimony of him being seen in an area controlled by the Turks.”
“We didn’t tell our parents about this and handled it among the six siblings. Someone said that our brother was seen at the Mills of Karavas. We are in this room today because despite testimonies since 2001 placing him at the Mills of Karavas, our brother continues to be listed among the 126, and we wonder why. The 126 files were not given to the CMP because the then authorities believed that some names should be removed from the list of missing persons”.
“Rauf DenktaÅŸ claimed that the 126 were killed in the coup and that we shouldn’t search for them among the missing. I discussed it with the then Attorney General, Alecos Markides. He said, “Your parents saw him from here,” meaning in the free areas.”
The parents of Michalis were never informed about what happened to their child.
Vaso Pagoni, sister of the missing Michalis Pagoni, pointed out that the least the State could do for someone who gave his life for the homeland was to exhaust all avenues to determine his fate, rather than deliver a letter to the family saying they cannot search for him from the Turkish side.
The Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs, Anna Aristotelous, stated that in the Pagoni case in 2001, testimonies emerged that he went missing in the Karavas area. This, along with other cases from the 126 that were removed from the list of missing persons, were subsequently added back in.
