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A10 WORLD NEWS
Saturday 24 June 2017
Cyprus uses high-tech tools to speed search for its missing

By MENELAOS HADJICO- small hole.
STIS “After 43 years, you can
Associated Press imagine the emotional
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — pressure,” said Kyriakou.
With glue gun in hand, “When I saw the bones of
Turkish Cypriot anthropolo- my brother, I felt relief from
gist Sinem Hossoz meticu- this pressure.”
lously pieces together tiny The CMP still encounters a
fragments — the pulver- strong unwillingness from
ized skull of a child, one some witnesses or even
of the youngest victims of perpetrators to talk, de-
conflict on ethnically divid- spite promised immunity
ed Cyprus. from prosecution.
Paul-Henri Arni, the U.N.- “We’re 100 percent sure
appointed member to the that there are people
Committee on Missing Per- that are still alive who are
sons, says such things must keeping information,”
be done. says Kucuk’s Greek Cypri-
“It’s for the dignity of the ot counterpart, Nestoras
dead,” he says, but also to Nestoros. “We want them
spare relatives the shock to understand that it is
of seeing a smashed skull very, very useful for us and
when the remains are re- for the families that are still
turned to them. In this Wednesday, May 31, 2017 photo, an anthropologist classifications the remains of missing waiting and still looking for
“The skull in all cultures, in- persons at the anthropologist laboratory of Cyprus Missing Persons (CMP) inside the U.N buffer their loved ones.”
cluding here, is the center zone in the divided capital Nicosia, Cyprus. Associated Press A public appeal for infor-
of the human person, it’s mation has been made by
the soul,” Arni said at the pinpoint graves are dying inflow of information by up flag-draped coffin carrying the island’s Greek Cypriot
CMP laboratory on the out, while unceasing con- to 20 percent. the remains of her son Epi- President Nicos Anastasia-
grounds of the disused struction sometimes makes “The important thing is that phanios was lowered — a des and Turkish Cypriot
Nicosia airport straddling a such burial sites forever in- we do everything in our ca- burial with full military hon- leader Mustafa Akinci, who
U.N. controlled buffer zone accessible. pacity ... so when we turn ors at Makedonitissa mili- will meet in late June in Ge-
where skeletal remains are To expedite its work, Arni our faces to the families, tary cemetery. neva for a summit in con-
assembled for identifica- says the CMP is now sifting we should be able to say The remains of Epiphanios, tinuing pursuit of a break-
tion. through archival informa- that we did everything for a 20-year-old second-lieu- through deal reunifying the
With international dona- tion it has for the first time them,” she said. tenant, were found along island. A similar appeal has
tions, the CMP has worked gained access to from The decades-long agony with those of five other been made by the island’s
diligently for 11 years to the U.N., the International of the relatives of the dis- comrades in a makeshift Christian and Muslim lead-
help heal a gaping wound Committee of the Red appeared is what drives grave after vanishing on ers. Not all remains of the
from this east Mediterra- Cross and some six coun- Romanos Liritsas, a Greek Aug. 15, 1974, during a re- missing will be found, says
nean island’s tortured past tries that had dispatched Cypriot researcher with the treat from of advancing Kucuk. In some instances,
and foster its future recon- peacekeeping troops to committee. Turkish troops. only partial skeletal re-
ciliation. It has unearthed Cyprus at the time of the It’s “the humanitarian as- A Turkish Cypriot man who mains will be returned to
and identified more than fighting. pect that edges us to recently recalled see- families.
a third of the 2,001 Greek It’s also investing in new speed up, because the ing the soldiers’ unburied Some of the dead were
and Turkish Cypriots who technologies like the Geo- relatives have been wait- bodies in a gully shortly af- left exposed on hilltops or
vanished during fighting graphic Information Sys- ing much too long to find ter fighting ceased, said buried in riverbeds, so their
between the two sides in tem, or GIS, that links all their beloved ones,” says Sevgul Uludag, a Turkish bones were scattered.
the 1960s and during the information gathered from Liritsas, standing in a field in Cypriot journalist who for Others may be buried un-
summer of 1974. That’s archives, investigators the northern, Turkish Cypriot years has been gathering der apartment buildings
when a coup aiming at and eyewitnesses to give half of the island where col- information on the where- where the remains are in-
union with Greece trig- a more exact estimate of leagues, acting on an tip, abouts of the missing. The accessible, although the
gered a Turkish invasion possible burial sites. are searching for a missing Turkish Cypriot man was 7 CMP did dig up a private
that split the island into a Gulden Plumer Kucuk, the soldier’s remains. years old at the time, riding pool to get to the remains
breakaway, Turkish Cypriot CMP’s Turkish Cypriot mem- Greek Cypriot Eleni Kyriak- atop a donkey led by his of two missing persons. In
north and an internation- ber, says she expects the ou lived long enough to grandfather, who had bur- other instances, remains
ally recognized south. new approach will begin bury her son. The 88-year- ied the soldiers. could have been dug up
Time is working against the to produce results within a old sat in a wheelchair at Epiphanios’ older brother and reburied elsewhere,
committee. Potential eye- year. She estimates the ar- the head of the grave into Kyriakos said the back of reinforcing the silence of
witnesses who could help chival search will boost the which the small, wooden his brother’s skull bore a perpetrators.q