Cyprus Genocide

Cyprus

When Cyprus gained its independence from Great Britain in 1960, Turkey initiated a campaign of political interference, violence and state sponsored terrorism in order to bring down the Republic of Cyprus and partition the island. Reporting on Turkeys intentions and those of their rebellious Turkish Cypriot puppets the UN Secretary General's mediator for Cyprus Galo Plaza Lasso noted that the Turks wished to physically remove the Greek Cypriot majority which made up 82% of the population and owned 90% of the land and property on the island from their homes in the north.

"In short, they wished to be physically separated from the Greek community. Their first inclination had been to seek this separation through the outright physical partitioning of Cyprus between the Turkish and Greek nations, of which in their opinion the Turkish and Greek communities constituted an extension. However, "considering that this would not be willingly agreed to by Greek and Cypriot-Greeks", they modified this concept to that of creating a federal State over the physical separation of the two communities. (Galo Plaza report 1965 para. 72)"

"Their proposal envisaged a compulsory exchange of population in order to bring about a state of affairs in which each community would occupy a separate part of the island. The dividing line was in fact suggested: to run from the village of Yalia on the north-western coast through the towns of Nicosia in the centre, and Famagusta in the east. The zone lying north of this line was claimed by the Turkish-Cypriot community; it is said to have an area of a about 1,084 square miles or 38 per cent of the total area of the Republic. (Galo Plaza report 1965 para. 73)"

"It would seem to require a compulsory movement of the people concerned - many thousands on both sides - contrary to all the enlightened principles of the present time, including those set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Moreover, this would be a compulsory movement of a kind that would seem likely to impose severe hardships on the families involved as it would be impossible for all of them, or perhaps even the majority of them, to obtain an exchange of land or occupation suited to their needs or experience; it would entail also an economic and social disruption which would be such as to render neither part of the country viable. Such a state of affairs would constitute a lasting, if not permanent, cause of discontent and unrest.. (Galo Plaza report 1965 para. 153)"

This plan was put into action during the Turkish invasions of Cyprus in 1974 which divided Cyprus by force along the dividing line described above through a precess of brutal ethnic cleansing. Hours before Turkey launched its second invasion on 14 August it gave Cyprus the ultimatum to surrender the northern part of Cyprus to the Turks and remove all the Greek Cypriots from it above the line defined in the Galo Plaza report. When president Makarios would not immediately consent to the ultimatum Turkey carried out the premeditated genocide it had threatened the Greek Cypriots with since they sought independence from the British by force.

The on-going premeditated campaign by Turkey to destroy, either in whole or in part, the indigenous Greek population of Cyprus and to wipe out the islands historical Hellenic identity though aggression, occupation, mass killings, ethnic cleansing, colonisation, destruction of cultural heritage, oppression and Turkification, constitutes a campaign of genocide.

Acts of Genocide perptrated by Turkey in Cyprus

According to Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Genocide is defined as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group ;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group ;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part ;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group ;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group .

All of these acts of genocide have been perpetrated by Turkey in Cyprus with the intent of destroying the Greek Cypriots.

Further evidence of Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots premeditation in order to perpetrate genocide against the Greek Cypriots is provided by the Annan plan.