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10/07/2006
The European Parliament has adopred a written declaration calling on greater efforts to protect and preserve religious heritage in northern Cyprus.
The written declaration by Member of the European Parliament Panayiotis Demetriou and Italian member of the European Parliament Iles Braghetto was signed by 407 MEPs.
According to the Cyprus News Agency, the declaration condemned the pillage of Greek Orthodox churches and monasteries and the removal of their ecclesiastical items, called on the Commission and the Council to take the necessary actions to ensure respect for the Treaty and the protection and restoration of the affected churches to their original Greek Orthodox status, called on the Commission and the Council to examine this matter under the relevant chapters of the negotiations with Turkey and instructed its President to forward this declaration, together with the names of the signatories, to the Commission and the Council.
According to the declaration, more than 133 churches, chapels and monasteries that are located in the northern part of Cyprus controlled by the Turkish army since 1974 have been desecrated, 78 churches have been converted into mosques, 28 are used as military depots and hospitals and 13 are used as stockyards, and their ecclesiastical items, including more than 15,000 icons, have been illegally removed and their location remains unknown.
Speaking at a press conference here, Demetriou said that the importance of this written declaration is mainly cultural as it aims at the protection of Cyprus religious heritage which is mainly consisted of churches, icons and other ecclesiastical items, but also a political one as it has drawn the attention of the members of the European Parliament towards the invasion and occupation of Cyprus and its consequences.
The basic consequences are known and include the destruction of our cultural religious heritage, he added.
He said that for the first time after the standstill of the last years, the European Parliament turns without any reservation with a positive way towards the problems raised by our side and this impact is surely positive as regards the substance of the problem because the reason of this destruction, which is the ongoing occupation of the northern part of Cyprus, is being detected.
“My goal is to send out this declaration to the UN Secretary General, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, the World Council of Churches and the Vatican,” he added.
“I have also made some preliminary negotiations, given the responsibility of the EU to protect the cultural heritage of all of its member states, so as to have a fund included in the EU budget for next year to repair the churches,” he added.
A press release issued by Demetriou’s office said that Turkey reacted fervently from the beginning against the declaration, sending to all MEPs a memorandum by which it “refused” the churches have been desecrated or converted into stables and warehouses.
Cyprus MEPs Yiannis Kasoulides, Adamos Adamou and Kyriakos Triantafyllides as well as Greek MEP Costis Hadjidakis cooperated with Demetriou with a view to achieve a mass and manifold support to the declaration, the press release said.
It noted that Greek MEPs Stavros Labrinides, Panos Beglitis and Nicolaos Sifounakis also promoted that declaration at the Socialist Group while the contribution of French MEP of the European People’s Party and Coordinator of the European Parliament High-Level Contact Group with the Turkish Cypriot community Francoise Grossetete and the Spanish Socialist MEP Felipe Sanchez-Guenca Martinez was important.