Felipe Ojeda

It is unthinkable that any nation that is a democracy and governed by its people would knowingly allow war crimes to be committed on another country and its people. We can’t become what we despise in our enemies.

In 1974, only 52 years ago, the Muslim barbarian Turks invaded Cyprus and committed crimes against Greeks that the human mind cannot comprehend and the whole world never heard about them. Mass murders of civilians were carried out systematically by the Turkish army. Not only unarmed soldiers who had surrendered, but also civilians, including children aged from 6 months to 11 years old, women, and elderly people up to 90 years of age, even paralysed individuals, people with intellectual disabilities, and blind people, were killed by Turkish soldiers. Eyewitnesses reported the killing of hundreds of persons by the Turkish forces. The accusations also include the murder of individuals who had attempted to visit areas under Turkish military control in order to collect their belongings from their homes. According to the report, the Turkish committed mass and repeated rapes of Greek Christian women of all ages, from 12 to 71 years old, in some cases to such an extent that the victims suffered from haemorrhages (loss of blood from a damaged blood vessel) or were left as mental wrecks. All the women and girls were gathered in separate rooms of empty houses. There they were repeatedly raped by the Turkish troops. In some cases, members of the same family were repeatedly raped in front of their own children. In other cases, women were raped publicly in a bestial manner. In some instances, the rapes were accompanied by brutal acts, such as violent biting that caused serious wounds to the victims, banging of the head on the floor, and strangling of the neck almost to the point of suffocation. In several cases, attempts at rape were accompanied by stabbing or the killing of the victim. Pregnant women were also among the rape victims. Among many other cases, a mentally retarded girl was raped in her home by twenty soldiers, one after the other. When the victim began to scream, they threw her from the window of the second floor: she suffered a spinal injury and remained paralysed. "They put us in a school classroom in Voni, along with the rest of the family. They would come in whenever they wanted, choose us, and take us to satisfy their sexual desires. I didn't go out to get rations. I always wore my grandmother's clothes to look old, but they could see my face. I only went out when I needed the toilet. I was constantly wrapped in a blanket, and all the little kids sat on top of me so that the Turks wouldn't keep dragging me away and raping me. This lasted for three months, until the Red Cross arrived." Testimonies from women victims of rape during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. The crime described took place in the occupied village of Voni in the Nicosia province, which had been used by the Turkish army as a detention camp for women and children. Similar camps had also been set up in the villages of Vitsada, Marathovouno, and Gypsou in the Famagusta province, where, according to testimonies, systematic rapes were committed by the Turkish army. Hundreds were also the abortions that were carried out en masse in the second half of 1974 in Cyprus. According to testimonies from doctors recorded in the book by Chrysanthos Chrysanthou, "The Other War of the Doctors in 1974," hundreds of brutally abused women became pregnant and special legislation had to be passed so that they could terminate their pregnancies. Many abortions were performed in private clinics, several at the Nicosia General Hospital, while due to the overcrowding of that hospital with war wounded, many abortions were undertaken by doctors at the hospitals of the British Bases in Dhekelia and Akrotiri. Previously, many other women had miscarried using abortion pills, which were distributed to them by the Red Cross while they were still in the Turkish army's detention camps; a fact that leads to the conclusion that the brutalities of the Turkish soldiers were known even before the liberation of the captive women. It is noted that, in order to facilitate the process of mass abortions, even the Church of Cyprus had consented through its tolerance to the amendment of the legislation in 1974, so that the abortions of that period became legal. This happened 52 years ago. This happened to our mothers, to our sisters, to our grandmothers. We will never forget, so this will never happen again. We will rest when the terrorist state of Turkey will be destroyed.