This is an open letter / plea  to all readers who are in position to exercise their influence on Turkey to disclose information about the missing persons of Assia.

Missing persons of Assia {Ashia, Άσσια} village Cyprus since August 1974

article created:  23/1/2015,  last update: 31/7/2018

Assia, situated in the central plain of Mesaoria, was a peaceful and vibrant rural community with a population of about 2700 in 1974. In the early morning hours of 14 August 1974, the village was bombarded by the Turkish air force.  Until that day there were no hostilities in our area and no army units were stationed in or close to the village.  In the hours that followed, a large number of civilians from neighbouring villages, fleeing from the warring zone near Mia Milia, fled to our village for safety and the members of our community were busy trying to provide them with food and shelter.  Around 14:00 hours the same day, without any previous notice, Turkish tanks entered the village, followed by the Turkish infantry.  In the pandemonium that ensued people were trying to flee from the village.  Many managed to escape, but an estimated number of about 900-1000 people were less fortunate.  They were consequently enclaved and experienced two weeks of absolute horror.

Thirteen individuals were executed in cold blood during the first hours of the capture of the village.  In the days that followed the Turkish army and armed Turkish Cypriots form neighbouring villages went on a rampage.  Men and young boys were captured and some started disappearing, individually or in groups.  Many women and young girls were humiliated and experienced the horror of rape, and from 16 August 1974 onwards the village was systematically looted.  Our homes were stripped of their belongings and men and young boys were tortured.  Indicative of the environment that prevailed was the violent beating of the renowned Cypriot naive painter of Cyprus, Michael Kashalos aged 89.  Some soldiers entered his home and asked for money.  He gave them all he had, but they asked for more.  They struck him with the butt of a rifle and left him lying there in very bad shape.  He was later on transferred to Larnaca where he died of his wounds on 30 August 1974.

During a mass operation conducted by the Turkish army on 21 August 1974, all the houses were evacuated and the people were forced by armed soldiers to march towards the village square of St. Ioannnis Prodromos in the upper parish of the village.  Women and children were separated completely from the men and young boys - 15 and above - and were led to the eastern part of the village, where they were literally piled in big numbers in a dozen or so houses.  Cut off from all basic amenities, including electricity and running water, and without any food, the women and children lived in appalling conditions of deprivation and fear.

The final act was enforced in the following days, when the inhabitants were gradually expelled by force.  The last inhabitants of the village were forced out on 28 August and never allowed to return since then.

The drama of the missing persons

In total 105 individuals aged 11 - 84, including 8 youths under the age of 18, who were captured in Assia disappeared and went missing thereafter;  96  were civilians, 8 reservist and 1 military personnel.

The missing members of our community since 1974

The missing persons from neighbouring communities who disappeared in Assia

Facts and Figures:

Note: For 21 cases of missing persons from Assia no information has been provided and no progress has been made.

The case of the mass murder of 70 missing civilians in Ornithi -  captured in Assia on 21 August 1974

This was the largest sub-group of the 105 missing persons who disappeared in Assia.

Circumstances of disappearance

On 21 August 1974, Turkish soldiers accompanied by Turkish Cypriots, whose names we know, arrested all the men and young boys remaining in the village.  On the same day, according to testimonies of eyewitnesses, 107 persons were loaded on 3 lorries and under guard by Turkish soldiers were driven to the Turkish quarter of Nicosia, Pavlides garage - the temporary place of captivity of Greek Cypriot Prisoners of War prior to their transfer to Turkish prisons in mainland Turkey.  The Turkish Cypriot police in charge of Pavlides garage selected 37 persons, below the age of 50, who were detained in the said garage.  The remaining 70 civilians were not detained and orders were given to their guards to return them to Assia, apparently due to their advance age. 52 of the said individuals were residents of our village and the remaining 18 residents of neighbouring villages who were also captured in our village.

Mass graves in Ornithi

In the spring of 2009, the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) conducted a search in the Ornithi area on the outskirts of Afania village, situated about 4 km west of Assia, which lasted for more than a year.  Four burial sites were disinterred, two of which were water wells and the sites of mass graves.  According to official briefings, the remains identified by DNA testing in those two mass graves have so far confirmed the presence of 68 of those individuals, but anthropological studies have given an indication of the presence of 70 individuals that matches the list of civilians who were captured in Assia on 21 August 1974 as described above.

Organised removal of remains to unknown location

Other evidence that emerged from the search in the Ornithi area was that the two mass graves had been previously exhumed. The human remains were removed and transferred elsewhere, apparently in an effort to hide the evidence of a mass murder.  The CMP managed to recover only seven complete or nearly complete skeletons.

For the remaining missing persons in the two mass graves, as we have been officially briefed and also witnessed during our visit to the Anthropological Centre in the Nicosia Airport area in June 2014, only a very small number of bones or bone fragments have been discovered.  In a number of extreme individual cases the findings involve bone material of just a few centimetres.

Latest developments regarding the Ornithi mass murders:  On 17 November 2017, the Turkish Cypriot member of the CMP, Mrs Gulden Plumer Kucuk and her assistant Mr Murat Soysal, officially informed the Committee of the Relatives of the Missing Persons of Assia that according to their investigation they believe they have credible information that the remains of our missing relatives were transferred, approximately during the perioud 1995 - 96, to the garbage dump site in the area of Dikomo which was the primary landfil site of the occupied northern part of Nicosia and its suburbs. The site remained in use until the early  2000s and was consequently restored environmentally through funding from the European Union.  The CMP has expressed its commitment to examine all the facts surrounding the landfil site and to design an investigation plan.  To this day no firm plan has been drawn up.  The relatives of the missing persons insist that a full investigation is conducted to locate the remains  of their loved ones.

The role of Turkey

The massacre of the 70 civilians at Ornithi by the Turkish army has been documented with appaling detail through the testimony from O. Saat, who was serving in the 1st battalion of the 21st Artilery Division of the Turkish army, in the book written by Roni Alasor, "Διαταγή Εκτελέστε τους αιχμαλώτους", εκδόσεις Καστανιώτη, 2002. pages 117-119.

The findings from the disinterment conducted by the CMP gave uncontested evidence that the disappearance of the remains from the mass graves in the Ornithi area was a result of a large scale operation which was conducted in an organised manner that entailed the use of heavy machinery, trucks and most likely many people working for days at a small distance from the village of Afania and the huge army base in Assia, hosting the headquarters of the 28th Infantry Division of the Turkish Army.  Given the nature and scale of the operation, we strongly believe that it was conducted under the initiative or at least with the full knowledge of the Turkish Army.  Therefore, they must have clear knowledge of the history and whereabouts of the transferred remains.

Further evidence that supports the above conclusion is the findings from exhumation work on various locations on the island.  Indicatively we mention the cases of mass graves in Ayios Ilarion, Kornokipos, Afania, Assia-Ornithi, and most recently Lapithos, one of the biggest mass graves on the island, all of which have been previously removed.

All of the above provide strong evidence that this strategy was planned, organised and executed at a very high level and the intent was to eradicate the evidence of war crimes committed by the Turkish army in Cyprus in the summer of 1974.

Organised removal of remains and the effects on the program - time, cost and quality of end result

The intentional and organized exhumation and removal of bones, conducted by the Turkish authorities, constitute a major disruption and complication for an inherently challenging and difficult process.  The disruption takes place at all levels of the process, in the required time to exhume and sift through hundreds of tons of soil, the time needed by the anthropologists to study the findings of hundreds or even thousands of small bones or bone fragments, and the dramatic rise in the cost to conduct DNA tests on a big number of scattered bones for each individual case. This in turn hinders the whole process, causing unpredictable time delays and a growing need for additional financial resources due to the increased complexity of the task. 

The CMP's position and its problematic mandate

The CMP mandate is highly restrictive and according to the Terms of Reference and Mandate as stated on its web page, basically stipulates that:

Item 11.
"The committee will not attempt to attribute responsibility for the deaths of any missing persons or make findings as to the cause of such deaths"

Item 13.
"The committee will use its best efforts to draw up comprehensive lists of missing persons of both communities, specifying as appropriate whether they are alive or dead, and in the latter case approximate time of the deaths."

In the case of our missing relatives the CMP considers the evidence of DNA, on small bone fragments as ample evidence to reach their key objective and therefore bring any case to a close.

This is the reason why the families of the missing persons of Assia strongly object to the handling by the CMP, which is bound by an agreement established in 1981 which obviously did not foresee that mass graves would be transferred to various hiding places.  The families are overwhelmed by feelings of sadness and anger at the same time, and strongly feel that the CMP blatantly ignores their rights and feelings in favour of "statistical progress".

The families are faced with a strong dilemma, and many chose to proceed with the burial of the small bone remains available.  At the same time they strongly condemn the insensitivity of the Turkish side which through its actions and lack of cooperation aims to keep the case of the missing persons of our village permanently open in their hearts and minds.  It is sad and outrageous to know that the bulk of the remains of their missing relatives will effectively stay intentionally buried in a hiding place with the full knowledge of the Turkish army and the Turkish Cypriot Authorities.

Gross violation of the rights of the families to know

The opening of the mass graves and the transport of the remains to an unknown location raises serious questions about the motives of the perpetrators. It is clear that in the case of the missing civilians of Assia there was a gross violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. The exhumation and disappearance of the remains of these individuals clearly intended to erase the evidence of a war crime.

Further, under Resolution 1956 (2013) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, relatives of missing persons have a right of access to information on missing persons which is essential in establishing their identity, location, fate and the circumstances of their disappearance and/or death.  Under the same resolution member states are under an obligation to respect the right of families to recover the remains of their missing family members.

Our request

We strongly request from all interested parties who are in position to exercise their influence to convince Turkey to cooperate fully and to provide detailed information as to the new burial site of our missing relatives who were murdered in Ornithi as well as the remaining 21 cases for which no information has been made available.   Turkey has the responsibiliy to provide the families with information regarding the circumstances they have met their death, the cause of death and those responsible for their death.

Further, the CMP must be encouraged to show more respect to the needs of the families of the missing persons and to adopt the spirit rather than the letter of the 1981 Agreement.  The CMP must be deterred from simply closing these cases on purely technical grounds, i.e. the finding of DNA.  The CMP mandate did not foresee the intentional and organised removal of remains to new locations and therefore their mandate must be expanded to include these cases as a separate category that should remain open until each case is fully resolved.  The mission of the CMP cannot be considered as accomplished by delivering small bone fragments to the families of the missing persons.

Practically every family in our village has been affected by this great tragedy for the past four decades and definitely are entitled and deserve humane treatment.  It is our strong conviction that if properly managed the resolution of the humanitarian issue of the missing persons of Cyprus can lead to the ease of pain for the families and promote reconciliation among the Greek and Turkish Cypriot Communities.  On the contrary, the lack of cooperation from the Turkish side simply acts to reinforce and propagate the divisions and mistrust into the future.

We wish to thank you for your attention and look forward to having your support and solidarity in our effort to bring this tragedy to a close.

Committee of Relatives of Missing Persons of Assia

20 July 2018

The 70 Missing Civilians Murdered in Ornithi by the Turkish Army

Testimony by Turkish Soldier O. Saat - describing the mass murder in Ornithi as published in the book "Διαταγή Εκτελέστε τους Αιχμαλώτους",

published by:  Καστανιώτης, 2002.  pages 117-119

Disclaimer Note: this article is amended from time to time as deemed necessary as new information surfaces.  We always strive to give the most accurate facts available on the time of the last update.