The UN intervenes between the two sides who have informally established their own lines. The first deliveries of POWs are made. However, the drama of the few residents in Varosi is not over yet.
Fanos Christoforou
The enlisted soldier of the 201 TP, Fanos Christoforou who was on the Deryneia – Famagusta line remembers that after the arrival of UNFICYP, perhaps on the 18th or 17th of August, the Swedish detachment commander came and told Captain Katsios that the Turks had taken prisoners and they wanted to deliver them. Katsios sent Christophoros to receive them.
With an old Land Rover and without weapons, he went to the Turkish outpost, where he is still today. "I remember that the first one I received was a young lady, who was injured in the left breast. I'm still looking for her. Then they gave us old men and women. They didn't give us children." He speculates that they must have been arrested from Famagusta and not from the arrests that had taken place in the Perciena pervolia.
Asked what was the most important moment in his memory from all that he lived, Fanos Christoforou said that apart from when they thought the Greek planes had arrived and were cheering, but it was the Turkish ones, he was not moved by anything. "You know why; I was possessed. From the first moment I said 'Fano say it's a game, be very careful don't eat any strays, you'll do what you've been trained to do and what your superiors tell you to survive'. I saw it as a game, as magic, I didn't have any of that left."
"The two young T/k were hugging and crying and the older one bent down and kissed my cheek to save them"
But the scene he cannot forget, as he said, is the one with the three T/K prisoners in the Sakaria enclave. They were two young men and an older man. When the Greek adjutant B... appeared in front of them and wanted to take them, the three T/k understood that he was going to kill them. Christoforou was blocking the guard with his body, saying that he had orders to hand them over to his commander. The two young T/k were hugging and crying and the older one bent down and kissed him on the cheek to save them saying that he knows the brother of a Cypriot officer. "The absolute humiliation of man. I'm not going to forget that. That's why I couldn't imagine that I would be taken prisoner and the others above me would be fighting over who would kill me."
Fanos Christoforou also feels strongly when he hears that if some units or battalions were left, the city would be saved. "There was not one in a billion to face the Turks. We had essentially no weapons to deal with them. Although I am the most betrayed, my commander left me so that he could retreat, yet I recognize that the order to retreat was correct. They would slaughter at least 400 of our children like lambs. There was no way we could escape."
What to pour with a martini, it's amazing. He believes that anyone who fought in Varosi, held a gun and saw the Turks knows what the possibilities were. “What to do with Molotov cocktails? Throw molotov cocktails at the chariot? The planes flew and whizzed faster than the anti-aircraft Brownies and something water-cooled we had. We didn't even know what a rocket was."
Fanos Christoforou was dismissed a year later, in the summer of 1975. He went to study in Greece, where he has lived ever since.
Michalis Michael
On Sunday, August 18, the Michael family is still at home, in the area of Agia Zoni in Varosi. The father, Simos, with his son, Michalis, went for a walk to see the situation in Varosi. They had also seen dead people.
On Monday, August 19, 1974, Father Simos decided they had to leave and told his wife to pack their clothes and whatever else they could take in the car. They would leave by a dirt road that his father knew, through the Perciena groves. They started in the afternoon to leave little by little.
When they approached the pervolia of Perciena, 3-4 armed Turkish soldiers were thrown. They got them out of the car and with guns pointed at them they first searched his father, then his mother and then the car. Not the kids. The soldiers were talking among themselves in Turkish and after a while "they turned their guns on us and armed themselves. At that moment, however, we heard a voice from the depth of the groves that said something in Turkish. A Turkish officer with a star came and started slapping them and talking to them in Turkish. My father whispered to my mother - he knew a little Turkish - that they were playing with us and they were angry because we were small."
The Turkish officer with broken Greek turned to his father and told him not to be afraid. "He said to him 'we will take you to give a statement and tell us where you want your family to go, to Deryneia or your home and we will bring you and leave together?'" His father and mother decided to return to their home in Varosi and wait for him there until he gave a statement to the Turks. Michalis Michael remembers that his father did not wear military uniforms and did not join the army because he was born in 1937 and those born in 1940 and after joined the army with the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus. "Those who stopped them in Perciena and arrested his father were not miscreants, they were Turkish uniforms, with military uniforms."
The family's car on the way back to their home on Edessis Street was driven by one of the Turkish soldiers and his father was in a military jeep. When they got home, the family got off and the Turkish officer once again assured Michalis' mother that they would take her husband for deposition and bring him back. The Turks also took the family's car loaded with suitcases. In the previous investigation, the Turks identified the gold they had.
His father also got out of the jeep with his hands tied. The whole family stood together for the last time on the veranda of the house and Simos turned to his wife Giorgoulla saying to her: "Take care of our babies". It was his last conversation. He also greeted his children. "I felt something at that time. Like it was the last time I saw him. Those moments mark you and stay with you. They don't leave." He felt that the Turks could harm his father and in retrospect he considers them lucky that they did not kill him in front of them.
Sometime after they took his father from the house they heard gunshots. But they heard sporadic gusts and didn't know where they were coming from.
The next day, August 20, Tuesday, an Englishman who worked in the bases and lived in the neighborhood, when he saw the children playing with the bicycles in front of the house, went to his mother and asked her what they were doing there. She replied that she was waiting for her husband who was taken by the Turks for deposition the day before and then he explained to her that they are in danger of being killed by the Turks and they must leave. He told them that he would notify the UN and the Red Cross himself so that they could be registered and taken away.
"On the same day or the next day, I don't remember exactly, the UN came, registered us and gave us food. My mother told them that we don't want food but to bring back her husband and leave."
The next day or so, Michalis Michael remembers that it was 2-3 days after his father was arrested, a UN vehicle went to their house and they were told to pretend they were injured. They covered them inside the vehicle to tell the Turks if they stopped them that they were wounded. As it happened. They took with them only a bag containing the house key, the children's birth certificates, IDs and a few clothes.
The Michael family stayed at least 5 days in Varosi. Michalis Michail remembers that on the night of his father's arrest (19/8) or the following night, 3 middle-aged women went to their house and called for help and if anyone is there, as they heard the looting and the doors of the houses being broken, the bursts of weapons. His mother called them in and put them in the utility rooms where his mother's parents, his grandparents, lived. The grandfather, Charalambos and the grandmother, Christina, had stayed at home since the beginning of the B phase and they also left with the help of the UN, a few days after their daughter and grandchildren. The grandparents told them much later that the night right after the UN took the mother and children away, Turkish soldiers went to the house looking for them. But they didn't mind the grandparents, who were also registered by the UN.
From what his mother told him later, during those days they stayed in Varosi, Michalis was playing with his bicycle. "We knew there was a war, but we were playing with our toys."
They heard some testimonies that his father allegedly lived and was seen working in the port of Famagusta even after his arrest, but they were not reliable. "My father is on the list of 1819 missing persons. It is a clear case of a missing person, his arrest, an unarmed citizen, happened in front of us, in front of our eyes. It was not a disorderly army. In our case it was on regular duty. They occupied the city and formed groups of soldiers were searching the area for any soldiers. They targeted civilians and arrested him, and he has been missing ever since."
Michalis Michael wonders: "Didn't the Turks have an obligation to respect international conventions, human rights and a civilian they found with his family?" I tried to report it. I am an eyewitness. But unfortunately to do so my father or his bones must be found. How to do this? He was alone, he was taken alone. We don't know where he might have been killed. He was not a soldier in combat and may be in some mass grave.'
The Michael family lives in Limassol. Michalis Michail has two sons and talks to them about their grandfather but "also about the tragedy we went through as Cyprus, the betrayal and the price paid in the end by the innocent people who are not to blame for anything".. His mother lives with his sister in Zakaki. "The truth is that after 1974 no one cared whether we lived or died, nor how we had a good time. My mother suffered, she was tortured to raise two children alone." It tells the story of life with a missing father. He matured, he grew up quickly, he didn't have a childhood. "I was 11 years old and I thought I was 18-20. Childhood had to go, we had to support our family. I've been working since I was very young."
"We absolutely want to find our man, our parent because we still strongly feel the bitterness and injustice. We feel he was unfairly sacrificed." And his mother is still waiting for the bones of her husband, with whom she lived for only 14 years. For a few years now, every August 14th, he holds a small memorial service. And he's waiting..."
Fallen and missing
According to the DEA data, approximately 500 arrests were made in Perchiena's fairgrounds. In addition to the DEA data on those murdered there, there is also a list of "the fallen who were buried in known and unknown places in the occupied territories".
It includes dozens of cases involving residents of Famagusta. The exact number of those killed cannot be calculated. Graves within Famagusta were also made by the UN to bury E/k as well as T/k who had not been buried.
According to DEA data, executions in the pervolia of Perchiena also took place on August 21, 1974.
Source: KYPE