Republic of Cyprus

Ms MICHAELS (Enfield) (15:28): Today, I want to talk about a little village called Eptakomi on the north-east coast of Cyprus. In the mid-1970s, it had a population of about 900 people, including my parents, my brothers, my grandparents and in fact most of my family. I am told it was a beautiful place with a beautiful old church, but I have never been there and I cannot go there.

Yesterday, 20 July, was an anniversary of great sadness for my family and the more than 30,000 Cypriots who now call Australia home. On 20 July 1974, the Turkish military invaded the island of Cyprus. Over the next month, it displaced more than 150,000 Greek Cypriots, including my family who jumped into a car in the middle of the night with nothing more than the clothes that they were wearing, drove through the night across orange orchards and farms, escaping the tanks, the gunfire and the terror.

As a result of the invasion, one in three Cypriots became refugees. They were displaced from their homes and forced to relocate without any of their property or belongings, which they were forced to leave behind. I still remember stories of my brother crying because he lost his little red car and my oldest brother crying because he left his pillow at home, and he said he could not sleep without it. I was not born when my family was forced out of their home, although I came close.

Due to the military action of the Turkish government, I was born as a child of refugees in London a few months after that, far away from that beautiful little village in Cyprus. During the course of the invasion and subsequent occupation, many Greek Cypriots lost their lives defending their country. More than 2,000 Greek Cypriots were shipped off to Turkey as prisoners of war, many of whom were never released.

To this day, there are more than 1,500 Greek Cypriots who remain missing. That is 1,500 families who do not know where their loved ones are, 1,500 families whose grief is exacerbated because the resting place of their sons, daughters, brothers and sisters is unknown. And now, some 46 years later, hope of ever recovering their remains fades to hopelessness and despair. Mr Speaker, imagine living like that for almost 50 years.

Cyprus remains to this day divided by an occupying force in the north. The European Court of Human Rights has found against the Turkish government for abuses of human rights in the course of its occupation. The United Nations Security Council, through resolution 367, universally condemned the Turkish government's declaration of the occupied territory as 'a Federated Turkish State'. I wholeheartedly support that condemnation of the Turkish government's occupation of my family's land.

In its occupation of Cyprus, the Turkish military has sought to ethnically cleanse the occupied territory through the violent expulsion of Greek Cypriots from their homes while settling approximately 120,000 mainland Turks into the occupied territory. As history has shown, the Republic of Turkey is not opposed to the brutal ethnic cleansing of civilian populations.

In the early 1920s, they committed atrocities against the Greek Pontians, the Armenians and the Kurds and have continued that practice in recent attacks in Syria. The Turkish government must remove its military from Northern Cyprus. The Turkish government must respect the sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus, as the rest of the world does. The only solution to the Cypriot conflict is for the demilitarisation and reunification of the island.

My family, along with many other South Australian Cypriot families, had their lives destroyed when they were displaced from their homes. A resolution to this conflict must result in a just settlement for these families to assist in the process of healing long-open wounds. My father is no longer with us and will not be able to see an end to the conflict, nor receive any restitution. I pray that my mother will before she dies.

The commonwealth government must aid in the current peace process. The United Nations, through its many resolutions, acknowledges the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus. As a member state of the UN, Australia must advocate for those resolutions being respected by the Republic of Turkey. As we say in Greek, 'den xehno', meaning, 'I will not forget'.