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AKEL on European Parliament Resolution on “Mass graves of the missing persons of Ashia in Ornithi village in the occupied part of Cyprus”

 

Statement by Stavri Kalopsidiotou,

member of the Cyprus Affairs Department of the C.C. of AKEL

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 13th February 2015, Nicosia

 

ektafes cprYesterday’s almost unanimous approval by the European Parliament of the resolution on the mass graves of the missing persons from the village of Ashia in the occupied village of Ornithi is a significant and special achievement. The initiative, which was undertaken by the political group of the Left and the European People’s Party on this deeply humanitarian issue and which won support from all the political groups in the European Parliament, is the result of a painstaking effort that began from the very beginning of AKEL’s participation in the European institutions.

Given our commitment to the struggle for the verification of the fate of the missing persons of the Cyprus tragedy, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, AKEL has always persisted on raising the issue of the missing persons inside the European Parliament. Through contacts and the submission of relevant amendments to resolutions on Turkey and in the work of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) we insisted, and continue working to highlight Turkey’s criminal responsibilities, demanding its denunciation by the body.

We welcome the fact that the momentum created also by the collective efforts of the Cypriot MEP’s, led to the adoption of the strongest ever resolution on the missing persons. With explicit references to Turkey’s illegal actions, in violation of International Humanitarian Law, conventional and customary, the relevant decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations, Turkey the “de facto occupying force” is called upon to facilitate the efforts being made by the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP), to give full access to its archives, to immediately cease the deliberate and criminal removal of the remains of missing persons and to provide information regarding new burial sites, a practice that unfortunately does not only concern those identified in the mass graves in the village of Ornithi.

Turkey’s actions, as the Resolution correctly points out, show a complete lack of respect for the missing persons and constitute a flagrant violation of the right of their families to finally know the real conditions of the deaths of their loved ones.

At the same time, the European Parliament calls for every effort to be made for the speeding up of the CMP’s . This stand reflects our position that for the investigations to be accelerated, the government and the European Union should make every effort to also ensure the necessary financial support to the CMP’s efforts for a speedy and final verification of the fate of the missing persons.

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