By Jean Christou
THE DECISION to exhume human remains at two cemeteries in Nicosia was not the result of the July 1997 agreement with the Turkish Cypriots on the missing, the government said yesterday.
The statement was made by government spokesman Costas Serezis, in a written announcement on the exhumation process currently under way to determine if any of those buried in the two cemeteries are on the list of persons missing since 1974.
Serezis said the exercise was not related to the July 1997 agreement made under UN auspices between President Glafcos Clerides and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash.
The Turkish side pulled out of the agreement shortly after files on the whereabouts of the graves of 200 Turkish Cypriots and 400 Greek Cypriots were exchanged in January 1998.
“The government of the Republic took the decision to proceed with the exhumation at this time because the scientific and technological progress made in the field of exhumations and examination of remains, creates sound expectations that it will be possible to establish, through scientific means, the identity of those buried,” Serezis said.
“The efforts to identify remains in the two cemeteries do not relate to the agreement of July 31 1997 on the missing and the exhumations provided by the said agreement.”
However, it is believed the Turkish side pulled out of the deal because they wanted the Greek Cypriot side first to reduce its number of 1,619 missing persons by establishing how many of them may be buried at the two Nicosia cemeteries.
The Turkish Cypriot side lists 803 since the outbreak of intercommunal troubles in 1964.
Serezis, although insisting there was no connection between the work and the 1997 agreement, said yesterday the government hoped the exhumation work will prompt the Turkish side to return to co-operation on the issue.
“The government hopes that this procedure will contribute to creating the appropriate climate so that the Turkish side will take the necessary decisions to implement the humanitarian provisions of the July agreement,” he said.
“The government wishes to stress once more that the solution of the wider humanitarian issue of the missing is a high priority.” Work began in earnest yesterday on the exhumation of remains at the Lakatamia cemetery, following the completion of preparatory work over the past week.
Experts have said that first results will not be known for several weeks.
The experts, from the non-governmental organisation ‘Physicians for Human Rights’, are led by Professor William Haglund.
The team includes anthropologists, archaeologists and pathologists.
“This will probably take us three to four weeks,” he told reporters yesterday, referring to work on an initial trench test.
“When we finish from the back part of the cemetery we will move towards the front,” he said.
Findings will be tested at the Institute of Neurology and Genetics, which has set up a DNA bank with samples from relatives of the missing.
Last year, two women whose husbands are on the missing list began digging graves at the Lakatamia cemetery with their bare hands, convinced their menfolk were buried there.
“The government considers the process of exhumation as a particularly painful experience for Cypriot society in general but especially for the relatives of missing and war dead,” Serezis said. He added that the missing issue could only be resolved if convincing scientific proof was provided.
He said the procedure under way at present concerned a small number of persons buried in 1974 without establishing their identity.
Andreas Savva, a Lakatamia resident and former government official who was at the cemetery yesterday, recalled how the bodies were buried in 1974.
He said that, in many instances, it would have been possible to establish the identity of those being buried, but no one bothered at the time.
Savva told journalists he believed that close to 200 people could have been buried there without identification.
“I would never have believed it,” he said. “They were brought with trucks, some from the hospital some from the military.”
Savva said he personally searched many of the bodies to try and identify them, and passed on his findings to the authorities. “They didn’t have to be unknown,” he said.
