THE COMMITTEE for Missing Persons (CMP) in Cyprus yesterday confirmed that reports of a massacre in Kyrenia would be investigated.
Allegations of a massacre were widely reported in the media after a witness gave an interview to the Turkish language Afrika newspaper.
According to the anonymous interview, a Turkish Cypriot man said he had witnessed the brutal murder of 320 Greek Cypriot prisoners of war when he was serving in the army.
The man said the captives were meant to be shipped to prisons in Turkey but instead were killed with bayonets by Turkish soldiers on the Kyrenia beach.
The witness believed that the bodies may have been buried near a hotel in Kyrenia.
Christophe Girod, the third member for the CMP, said yesterday that the allegations will be investigated.
“We take everything seriously. We check everything and follow-up everything that comes to our attention” he said.
“This is not a new story,” he clarified. “There is nothing new in this beach story, it is as old as 1974. The story looks new because it has been unearthed after not being discussed for a long time.”
However, he added, the CMP have and will be following up the allegations.
On Tuesday, the Committee for the Relatives and Friends of Missing Persons sent a plea to the media to stop publishing unconfirmed information about the missing and to “respect the pain and anxiety of relatives.”
Girod said, “These things do have an impact on the relatives. Each time the papers bring it up it triggers all sorts of reactions. It can raise their expectations or deepen their sadness.
“However, we do have to rely on public reports for our work. If people prefer to speak to the media, if they feel more comfortable, then what can we do? It is easy to criticise the media but the fact is that we (as a society) need them.”
Elias Georgiades, the Greek Cypriot member of the team, said “I have opinions but I cannot go on record with them.”
He said that discussing the issue publicly may be detrimental to the work of the CMP and to the co-operation between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots, which is essential to missing persons investigations.
“The issue is important” he added, “We will be investigating whether there is anything to it, but we will be doing that discreetly. The most important thing we need to clarify is; how credible is this eyewitness?”
It can be difficult to corroborate eyewitness reports of atrocities because psychology and memory may be impaired during or after traumatic events. Subjectivity can lead to a loss of perspective, causing accounts to be exaggerated or altered.
Iowa State University experimental social psychologist Dr Gary Wells explains that, “Like trace evidence, eyewitness evidence can be contaminated, lost, destroyed or otherwise made to produce results that can lead to an incorrect reconstruction of the crime”.
The anonymity of the eyewitnesses also makes it difficult for the CMP to investigate these matters.
However, the CMP have an extensive data bank at their disposal. The data bank will enable investigators on both sides of the divide to examine the allegations. Other possible eyewitness accounts and sources can be traced via the data bank in order to substantiate stories of incidents occurring in 1974. The data bank can be used to locate precise information and to verify or refute reports of this nature.
The locations of burial sites are also available on the data bank. Over 289 burial sites across the island have so far been visited and opened by the CMP. These sites are opened only after scientific examinations of these sites and when they have been satisfactorily confirmed as real sites.
As a result of the violence of 1974, a total of 502 Turkish Cypriots and 1,493 Greek Cypriots were officially reported missing to the CMP by both communities.
To date, the remains of 539 individuals have been exhumed from different burial sites located across the island. The formal identification of the skeletal remains of a missing person is established by a team of anthropologists and geneticists working for the CMP.
So far 172 individuals have been identified and their remains returned to their families.
