Missing Persons In Cyprus Research Articles

THE ROLE OF 14C DATING IN THE IDENTIFICATION OF MISSING PERSONS IN CYPRUS

ABSTRACT The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) is a bicommunal committee with the mandate to locate and identify the skeletal remains of 2002 persons who were reported missing during the inter-communal fighting of 1963–64, as well as the events of July and August 1974. During the periods of conflict, several archaeological sites and old cemeteries were used as primary burial sites, among several other types of burials, as they were easily accessed by the persons involved in the interment and little effort was needed to conceal the bodies. The relatively large post-mortem interval and the generally poor post-mortem preservation of the skeletal remains poses an additional challenge in the forensic examination process and the identification of the remains, particularly in the absence of a context or other associated artifacts/evidence. Between 2016 and 2020, the CMP has been collaborating with CEDAD to clarify the relevancy of several cases by using radiocarbon dating. The CMP submitted 139 cases to CEDAD out of which 112 were determined as not linked to the 1963–64 and 1974 events and then not relevant for the CMP project. For the remaining samples radiocarbon dating was used to determine death age.

Optimizing coastal exhumation strategies: The casework of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (2006–2022)

This paper reports on coastal exhumations performed during 2006–2022, under the framework of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) humanitarian identification programme. CMP archaeologists investigated 217 coastal locations and recovered skeletal remains on 44 occasions. Challenging environmental conditions required a customized exhumation plan, which could be executed swiftly without compromising operational integrity or standards. The author performed a retrospective analysis to propose an optimized strategy, which includes a survey, exhumation, digital documentation, and post-processing components, with the aim of minimizing the effects of adverse environmental conditions. The proposed strategy is based on scientific standards and observations in the field; it can satisfy the needs of a humanitarian or criminal investigation if appropriate measures are taken to uphold legislative and forensic standards. The author also discussed the taphonomic effects of coastal erosion and wave activity in tandem with exhumation recommendations to assist forensic practitioners involved in similar investigations.

Truth and Closure in Cyprus: An Assessment of the Committee on Missing Persons

There are two key limitations to the literature that explores the relationship between truth and closure in post-violence societies. The first is that this relationship has been assessed mostly as part of a larger debate focusing on the links between the truth and the seemingly related concept of reconciliation. The second is that to the extent that the literature has addressed the connections between truth and closure as such, it has focused almost exclusively on the operations and effects of courts and truth commissions. The article addresses both limitations by examining the relationship between truth and closure through the prism of a different institution, the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus. Relying on 34 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, including relatives of missing persons on the island, it argues that the Committee's delivery of the truth has promoted closure in three distinct ways. At the same time it acknowledges that the type of truth and the way in which it is delivered can have detrimental consequences for the promotion of closure. A short video summarising the findings of this article is available here.

An integrated multidisciplinary approach to resolve long-standing unidentified human skeletal remains in Cyprus

The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) is a bicommunal committee established in 1981, tasked to determine the fate of 2002 individuals who went missing during the intercommunal fighting of 1963−64 and the events of 1974. The CMP operates strictly within a humanitarian framework, using a multidisciplinary approach to conclude individual identifications of remains exhumed throughout the island, where all information obtained from different phases of the CMP Project is integrated and assessed in a comprehensive manner. By 2017, although over 1000 sets of remains were recovered and either identified or resolved by the CMP, 137 challenging cases remained unidentified at the CMP Anthropological Laboratory. To resolve these cases, different strategies were adopted where the investigatory component was enhanced through the implementation of new data mining approaches, and the genetic-related data were revised and updated through the adoption of new DNA technologies and the improvement of the Family Reference Samples Database. These new approaches resulted in a dramatic reduction of the number of unidentified cases (by over 70 %) as well as the timeframe required for future identifications. These approaches could serve as an example in other humanitarian contexts facing similar challenges as they can have a profound impact on the families of missing persons.

Truth and Closure in Cyprus: An Assessment of the Committee on Missing Persons

There are two key limitations to the literature that explores the relationship between truth and closure in post-violence societies. The first is that this relationship has mostly been assessed as part of a larger debate focusing on the links between the truth and the seemingly related concept of reconciliation. The second is that to the extent the literature has dealt with the connections between truth and closure as such, it has almost exclusively focused on the operations and effects of courts and truth commissions. The article addresses both limitations by examining the relationship between truth and closure through the prism of a different institution, the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus. Relying on 34 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, including relatives of missing persons on the island, it argues that the Committee’s delivery of the truth has promoted closure in three distinct ways. At the same time, it acknowledges that the way in which and the type of truth that is being delivered can have detrimental consequences to the promotion of closure.

Optimizing search strategies in mass grave location through the combination of digital technologies

Efforts to locate missing persons resulting from conflict often centre of excavation. Although this approach is the only way to definitively confirm the presence of human remains, it can be costly and labour-intensive, particularly when large areas need to be searched. This paper discusses a wide range of emerging non-invasive digital methods implemented with a view to locating burials and mass graves and increase the excavation recovery rate of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP). Aerial and terrestrial survey and subsequent 3D modelling were combined with geophysical survey in order to record sites, two of which were excavated to ground-truth the findings. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of these techniques in defining the search parameters of potential burial sites and prioritizing features for investigation. The nature of the collaboration between archaeologists, digital technologists, and forensic experts allowed mutual trust to be built between all parties, whilst also testing the effectiveness of the methods employed.

Bilateral Asymmetry of Nutrient Foramen Position in Forearm Bones: Implications for its Use in Sorting Commingled Remains.

Commingling is frequently encountered in cases examined by the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, and pair-matching is routinely used as a preliminary segregation method. Here we examine the degree of bilateral asymmetry in nutrient foramen position of the radius and ulna to determine whether nutrient foramen position may be useful in visual and/or ostetometric pair-matching. Differences in nutrient foramen position between left-right pairs from the same individual were compared with differences in nutrient foramen position between different individuals. Bilateral asymmetry in nutrient foramen position was found to be high, indicating that it is not a reliable trait for pair-matching. Bilateral asymmetry and between-person variation were found to differ between the two bones examined, suggesting that nutrient foramen position in other long bones should also be tested.

Methodology issues of forensic excavations at coastal sites. The Cyprus (Committee on the Missing Persons in Cyprus) experience.

In 1981, the talks between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot leaders resulted in the establishment of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP), as a tripartite bi-communal committee taking decisions on the basis of consensus. It is comprised of three Members, representing the Greek Cypriot community, the Turkish Cypriot community, while the Third Member is nominated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General.

Population genetics of Turkish Cypriots from Cyprus: Forensic and anthropological implications

Turkish Cypriot DNA Laboratory (TCDL) operates under the Turkish Cypriot Member Office of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP). TCDL contributes to the UN-led CMP Project on Exhumation, Identification and Return of Remains of Missing Persons and also plays a leading role in the establishment of forensic genetic services in North Cyprus. A family reference sample (FRS) bank comprising the relatives of the Turkish Cypriot missing persons (MiPs) from the 1963/64 and 1974 era was established first. Since 2012, TCDL assumed full responsibility for DNA typing of all Turkish Cypriot FRSs, which are then used for familial DNA matching with those for the skeletal remains exhumed from all over Cyprus and analyzed at international laboratories such as ICMP and Bode Technology. Using a second sample bank comprising Turkish Cypriot volunteer samples, TCDL also conducts population studies for requisite statistical evaluations of MiP identifications.

Recovery of Missing Persons in Cyprus: Heavy Equipment Methods and Techniques for Complex Well Excavations.

This technical note presents the methods and techniques developed by the Bi-communal Forensic Team (BCFT) of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) used to excavate and exhume the remains of missing persons, many of whom were buried in deep wells at sites across the island of Cyprus during the conflict period of the 1960s and 1970s. A total of 493 Turkish Cypriots and 1508 Greek Cypriots were officially reported missing by the two communities as a result of the conflict. Since the team's formation, in 2005, the BCFT has excavated 114 wells, resulting in the recovery of 195 missing individuals from 35 of these well excavations. The standard excavation approach used by the BCFT, especially for deep well recovery, consists of "ramp," "pocket," and "pool" components. These excavation features enable CMP archaeologists to excavate deep wells safely and efficiently while simultaneously permitting time for thorough documentation and unimpeded recovery of human remains. The team uses three variants of this approach to cope with the variety of geological, physical, and hydrological contexts faced in Cyprus' wells, including hard and soft landforms, the presence or absence of water, and limitations imposed by surrounding infrastructure. The "terracing", "double-ramp", and "single-ramp" variations are detailed with respect to the environmental contexts which prescribe their use. The BCFT's general procedures for human remains recovery and standard well safety protocols conclude the article.

Burial patterns during times of armed conflict in Cyprus in the 1960s and 1970s.

The island of Cyprus experienced two periods of intercommunal conflict during which c. 2000 individuals went missing. The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus began a program of exhumations in 2005, through which more than 185 burial sites pertaining to the two periods of conflict have been identified and excavated. The aim of this study was twofold: (i) to present a classification of the main types of clandestine burial and (ii) to test the hypothesis that the nature of conflict influences the mode of interment. Burials can be divided into "public burials" and "concealed burials," based on the possible motives of those involved in the interment and then subdivided into smaller categories based on similarities in archeological context. A comparison of results from the two periods of conflict reveals that there are statistical differences (p<0.005), which indicate that the mode of interment may reflect the nature, character, and atmosphere of conflict.

Bodies of evidence: burial, memory and the recovery of missing persons in Cyprus – By Paul Sant Cassia

Bodies of evidence: burial, memory and the recovery of missing persons in Cyprus – By Paul Sant Cassia

Piercing transfigurations: Representations of suffering in Cyprus

This paper explores representations of suffering in Cyprus, a divided island. It examines differences between Greek and Turkish Cypriots in their official publicity/propaganda photographic material in representing the issue of missing persons in Cyprus. It attempts to show that the differences are relatable not just to their different persuasive strategies, but also to different approaches to photography, to experience and memory. For the Greek Cypriots, the sacrifice of the person has to be represented as an absent body, the quintessential example being Christ. By contrast, for the Turkish Cypriots it is the presence of a (dead) body, the body of the dead hero/fighter, that signifies a sacrifice and transforms him into a shehit (martyr). Such differences can be related to differences between the two groups in the political fabulation of the past and its appeal to “memory” and “experience”. The Turkish Cypriots because of their pressing political problems, especially between 1963–70 when they tended to view their survival as being at stake, use photographs in a relatively “realist” matter‐of‐fact way although their aim is highly emotionally charged. Greek Cypriots use photographs as representations of what is in effect an iconic predicament: representation as participating in some fundamental way in that which it represents. After examining the predicament of depicting suffering through photography, the paper suggests that to respond effectively to suffering we may have to approach it not through the seductive realism of the photograph but through its means of representing the symbolic and the imaginary.