Minister ‘misinformed’ over printmaking museum

The interior minister has “been misinformed” about the Hambis Printmaking Museum, founder Hambis Tsangaris said on Friday, following remarks to media that the administrator of Turkish Cypriot properties had undertaken to renovate the building housing the museum in Platanistia village in the Limassol district. “An outrage, mister minister! You have been misinformed,” Tsangaris said. On Wednesday, Tsangaris had invited friends of the museum to take whatever they needed free of charge, such as building materials, plumbing and plants, as the printmaking museum and school would be demolished. Tsangaris blamed the administrator of Turkish Cypriot properties for the mess.

He said he had built the museum and school on the ruins left on Turkish Cypriot land allotted to him by the government, but now “the countdown is beginning” with demolitions so that the buildings can be returned in the state he found them in. “They turned us into refugees in 1974, they use us, they deceived us, they exploited us and they continue to do so,” Tsangaris said. He added that for years human rights commissioners had been trying to sort things out but the administrator continued “to do their own thing”. The Tsangaris family, he said, had repeatedly sent letters over the years for the lease to be transferred to the museum and school to chairman Yiorgos Tsangaris, only to be told that the lease was not transferable by hereditary succession. Tsangaris said thousands of people had visited the museum and attended free lessons. “This is our aim, this is how we serve our Cyprus. ” He added that the administrator suggested that Tsangaris established a company and held 51 per cent of the shares in order to make the transfer possible. “I have never owned stock in my life, I don’t want any, I don’t need any.…