Agamemnon wrote:
>
> CHURCH - TURKEY
>
> The Cyprus Church intends to take Turkey to the European Court of Human
> Rights for preventing the restoration of looted Orthodox churches in
> the northern Turkish occupied areas of Cyprus and for its continuing
> refusal to allow access to the Christian Orthodox pilgrims for
> wor****p.
Cyprus Church to take Turkey to ECHR
http://www.financialmirror.com/more_news.php?id=9543&type=st&nt=Politics
http://www.financialmirror.com/fm_images/heading.jpg
10/01/2008
The Cyprus Church intends to take Turkey to the European Court of Human
Rights for preventing the restoration of looted Orthodox churches in the
northern Turkish occupied areas of Cyprus and for its continuing refusal
to allow access to the Christian Orthodox pilgrims for wor****p.
The Primate of the Church, Archbishop Chrysostomos B’, has said that he
will raise the issue to the President of the European Commission Jose
Manuel
Barroso, during his visit to Cyprus next week and then continue the
efforts through the Church of Cyprus office, which will open soon in
Brussels.
The Church will subsequently set up a team of legal experts to help
prepare its case before the Court.
In an interview with the Radio Station of the Church of Greece, the
Archbishop noted that “there are churches in the occupied areas, which are
half
destroyed, some have collapsed, others were demolished and most recently a
church in the Karpass peninsula was razed to the ground”.
He expressed fears that “if restoration is not allowed to start soon the
churches will begin to collapse one after the other.”
“We have reached a very dangerous point, we are not asking for anything
more than the restoration of our human rights and we will fight for them”,
the
Archbishop said, adding that the occupation authorities do not allow the
Church to send priests to the Monastery of Apostolos Andreas, situated on
the
rocky coast in the easternmost point of the Karpas peninsula. It was built
in 1867.
“The Turks want to uproot everything Greek and Christian in the occupied
areas, we will fight with all our strength to prevent this from
happening”,
Archbishop Chrysostomos said.
In 1974 Turkey launched a military invasion of Cyprus. In the immediate
aftermath until today what has been taking place is large scale damage to
churches, historic churches have been seized, stripped and whitewashed and
converted into mosques. In most of the Orthodox graveyards not a single
tombstone has remained standing.
There are about 500 Greek Orthodox churches in the northern Turkish
occupied part of Cyprus.
|
