CMP: Küçük rejects suggestion by GC colleague that excavation, identification in 2018 was ‘poor’
CRITICISM of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) for unearthing the remains of only 11 people last year, has been dismissed as “unrealistic”.
High-tech measures, including drones and ground imaging, have been deployed and staff given training to help the hunt for more than 2,000 people officially listed as “missing” since the conflicts of the 1960s and ’70s.
The CMP has recovered the remains of 160 in the North over the last three years compared to only four in South Cyprus.
However, the discovery of just 11 missing persons in 2018, led CMP Greek Cypriot member Nestoras Nestoros to describe the results of last year’s excavations as ‘‘poor’’.
He said he was optimistic of better results in 2019 and hoped for “greater cooperation” with Turkey in providing relevant information from its archives to resolve this “humanitarian issue”.
Responding to his comments in a December 28 interview with a Greek Cypriot newspaper, Mr Nestoros’s Turkish Cypriot counterpart on the three-member CMP, Gülden Plümer Küçük, said the committee had been set up “with the acknowledgement that both sides were responsible for what happened to missing persons in Cyprus”.
“It is unrealistic to blame only one side or claim only one side was responsible . . . [This] problem can be resolved through collaboration.”
Mrs Küçük, speaking to the TRNC’s state Tak news agency, said that since the committee began excavations in 2006, the remains of 927 missing persons — 678 Greek Cypriots and 246 Turkish Cypriots — had been exhumed, identified and returned to their families for burial.
The CMP lists the total number of missing persons as 2,002 — 1,510 Greek Cypriots and 492 Turkish Cypriots — and remains of 823 Greek Cypriots and 246 Turkish Cypriots are still unidentified.
Mrs Küçük, who has previously warned that the CMP faces a race against time as the number of witnesses to events of the ’60s and ’70s dwindles, reiterated a call for witnesses with information on the whereabouts of the “missing” to share it with the committee to help them find burial sites.
“The information you have might change the perspective of a family; it will touch their lives. For a humanitarian reason you can help,’’ she said, adding that all information would be strictly confidential.
She added: “This is a living project. With a 12-year background, it has gained the confidence of both sides, especially the relatives of missing persons.”