By Jean Christou
PREPARATORY work began yesterday on a series of exhumations at two Nicosia cemeteries, which are expected to turn up the remains of some of the Greek Cypriots listed as missing since the 1974 invasion.
At the Lakatamia cemetery early in the morning, three American exhumation experts, two men and a woman from the non-governmental organisation “Physicians for Human Rights, watched as workers began clearing decorative stones.
It was only a year ago that two women whose husbands are on the missing list began digging graves at the cemetery with their bare hands, convinced their menfolk were buried there.
Some 65 graves of unknown soldiers from 1974 are to be exhumed. Results of DNA tests on the remains are not expected for another three months.
The team includes anthropologists, archaeologists and pathologists.
Findings will be tested at the Institute of Neurology and Genetics, which has set up a DNA databank with samples from relatives of the missing.
A complete plan of action has not been worked out yet, a source at the Foreign Ministry said.
“We want to treat this issue with as low a profile as possible for the sake of the relatives,” the source said.
A government statement said the exhumations were taking place solely for humanitarian purposes and their main objective was to restore and respect the rights of relatives of war dead to be informed of their identity in a convincing manner.
“When the identity is established, the relatives will be informed and the remains will be given to them for proper burial,” the government statement said.
“The government of Cyprus is taking all the necessary steps for the completion of this humanitarian project with dignity and respect to the feelings of all, especially to the relatives concerned.”
Nicos Theodosiou, president of the Committee for the Relatives of Missing Persons, said yesterday they would be working closely with the American experts and would be informed every step of the way.
He was unsure whether the fact that work finally started was a relief after 25 years of uncertainty.
“We have mixed feelings,” Theodosiou said. “On the one hand, we want to put a stop to the agony and on the other we don’t want to hear bad news.”
The exhumations are part of an agreement reached in July 1997 between President Glafcos Clerides and Turkish Cypriot leader
Rauf Denktash on the exchange of information on missing persons.
The Greek Cypriot side lists 1,619 people as missing since 1974, while the Turkish Cypriot side has 803 missing since the outbreak of intercommunal troubles in 1964.
In January 1998, the files relating to the whereabouts of the graves of some 400 Greek Cypriots and 200 Turkish Cypriots were exchanged under UN auspices.
The Turkish Cypriot side pulled out of the deal a few weeks later, but the Greek Cypriot side decided to go ahead with the exhumations, starting at the Nicosia cemeteries.
Last Saturday, Clerides issued a personal plea to Denktash to work together to put an end to the missing issue once and for all.
