Today, December 21, marks the 57 years since the start of the intercommunal strife of 1963-64 in Cyprus.
The identities of the remains of seven girls, seven boys, 14 children, the youngest of whom were four and six months old, and the oldest 15 years, were discovered from DNA tests made during the excavations carried out by the Committee on Missing Persons in Muratağa from the Muratağa-Sandallar massacre. The massacre was carried out by members of EOKA-B in 1974.
The remains of these children will be interred at a ceremony to be held at the the Muratağa-Sandallar-Atlılar Martyrdom Memorial at 10am on 26 December 2020.
In a mass grave in Muratağa, the remains of 89 people were excavated by the Committee on Missing Persons between 14 October 2015 and 5 February 2016, from three different burial sites.
Yeniduzen goes on to write that no one has been called to account for these atrocities. Not one Greek Cypriot member of EOKA-B who took part in the massacres has been punished for their actions.
The newspaper also points out that similarly, Turkish Cypriots who were involved in the massacres in Palekitre (Balıkesir) and Derinya in northern Cyprus where women and children were targeted especially, have never been punished and walked away free.
The leaders of both Cypriot communities, unfortunately, tolerate those who have committed such crimes against humanity, preparing the ground for the repetition of such massacres in the future, the article says.
“Yet our call is, let us not forget that there is no timeout for war crimes committed against humanity … No matter how much time passes, it will be a valid struggle to decipher these crimes, punish them, and commit them to social memory in order to draw lessons from the past“.
