Funerals held for 15 missing persons from Aloa massacre

A funeral service was held on Friday evening for 15 missing persons, including nine children, whose remains had been recovered by the Committee on Missing Persons, at the Turkish Cypriot cemetery in the Famagusta district village of Aloa. The youngest to be buried was just 40 days old. The fifteen had all been killed by Greek Cypriot militias in the village on August 14, 1974, with similar violence erupting in the nearby villages of Maratha and Sandalaris, with a total of 89 Turkish Cypriots being killed as a result.

Those buried on Friday evening were 28-year-old Tulay Suleyman, 10-year-old Hasan Suleyman, six-year-old Kemal Suleyman, three-year-old Okan Suleyman, 12-year-old Gurhan Ali Cerkes, 56-year-old Ayse Hasan, 16-year-old Narin Hasan, 22-year-old Kiymet Hasan, 16-month-old Betul Arnavut, 36-year-old Mualla Ali Osman, four-year-old Gulden Ali Osman, two-year-old Ozlem Ali Osman, 40-day-old Seldem Ali Osman, 46-year-old Fatma Tahir, and 22-year-old Emine Tahir. The service was attended by Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman, Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz, Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel, Turkish ambassador in Nicosia Ali Murat Basceri, and a number of other dignitaries. Following the funeral, an opening event was held for a museum constructed to document the massacres, with Erhurman saying at that event that “those who murdered our people did not only murder our people; they murdered humanity, they murdered humaneness, they murdered civilisation”. He added that “we buried the 15 innocent and defenceless people who were murdered 52 years ago with the same pain as the day it happened”, before adding that “what happened in Aloa will never be erased from the memory of the Turkish Cypriot people”. “The Turkish Cypriot people have reached this…