President of the Republic, Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader, Ersin Tatar, will pay a joint visit to the Committee of Missing Persons on July 28th, at 9am.
UNFICYP spokesperson in Cyprus Aleem Siddique issued a statement, confirming the schedule of the meeting for Friday: "The visit of the two leaders, Nikos Christodoulides and Ersin Tatar to the anthropological laboratory of the Committee of Missing Persons is now confirmed and will take place on Friday 28th July at 9 a.m."
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied 37% of its territory. Since then, the fate of hundreds of people remains unknown.
A Committee on Missing Persons has been established, upon agreement between the leaders of the two communities, with the scope of exhuming, identifying and returning to their relatives the remains of 492 Turkish Cypriots and 1,510 Greek Cypriots, who went missing during the inter-communal fighting of 1963-1964 and in 1974.
According to statistical data published on the CMP website by December 31, 2021 out of 2002 missing persons 1,183 were exhumed and 1,023 were identified. Out of 1510 Greek Cypriot missing persons 732 were identified and 778 are still missing. Out of 492 Turkish Cypriot missing persons 291 were identified and 201 are still missing.
Source: Cyprus News Agency