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Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman of the convention that the names of Members are not mentioned. I know that in the first instance the name was given in a quotation, but the hon. Gentleman should be a little more careful.
Mr. Arnold: I was quoting from a letter; I am fully aware of the conventions of the House.
More important than those invitations, I challenged the Leader of the Opposition to a debate in the very shopping centre that he proposed to visit. I believe that it is far more important for shoppers to be informed of the answers to real questions rather than just given a photo-opportunity handshake.
In the event, the Leader of the Opposition was half an hour late. He did shake hands, but only with the Labour grandees of the local council. He rushed through one of the shopping centres in less than 10 minutes, looking somewhat harassed.
It is a great pity that the right hon. Gentleman did not accept my challenge, because such a debate would have been most interesting. Just yesterday in the Chamber, the Leader of the Opposition had great fun during Prime Minister's questions by proposing a debate on television with the Prime Minister. Why did he not respond to my invitation to a debate in the shopping centre at Gravesend? Indeed, I have still not had a reply to my letter, six days later.
I would have called on the Leader of the Opposition to answer a burning question for the people of Gravesend: quite simply, would he support the PFI for Darenth Park hospital, a major £100 million hospital project? I would have asked the right hon. Gentleman to tell me whether he supported the PFI scheme for that hospital--yes or no. If he had answered yes, he would then have had to give the Opposition health spokesman, the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman), some pretty firm instructions, because she has tried to undermine that project.
In the House recently, the hon. Lady mentioned the existence of a PFI priority list, which she claimed had been leaked from the Treasury, and which categorised projects into an A and B list. She had great fun jeering at me and my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford when she said that Darenth Park hospital was on the B list, and that therefore it was hardly likely to be developed. I have news for the hon. Lady: that project has attracted four major consortia, which have put in bids. Those applications are so good that two have been selected and invited to tender, and one of those tenders will be accepted. In other words, if the project is on the B list, as the hon. Lady claimed, it is certainly a golden list.
The hon. Lady has made other attacks on the concept of using the PFI for hospital construction. On 13 January she told a health conference at Birmingham:
The hostility behind that quotation is clear. If that was not enough to undermine the confidence of bidders to build our hospital under the PFI, she told the House:
That hardly instils confidence in the companies that are bidding, but then they are far more intelligent than the hon. Lady, and they have maintained their bids.
I would have liked to ask the Leader of the Opposition whether he supports the use of the PFI for Darenth Park hospital. If he were to answer yes, the hon. Member for Peckham should stop undermining our hospital. If he were to answer no, the people of Gravesham and Dartford deserve nothing less than a beautifully framed signed letter from the Opposition Treasury spokesman, the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), giving his firm commitment to invest £100 million of Government funds in year one to build that hospital. We would expect nothing less and we would expect a yes or no in support of our hospital.
I can assure the House that the Dartford and Gravesham national health service trust, local people and the local Members of Parliament back the project and are pressing ahead because we want our new district general hospital. It is the best prospect that we have had for many a long year, and it will be delivered under a Conservative Government through the PFI. The construction of that hospital would have a spin-off and release the Gravesend and North Kent hospital for the creation of the community hospital, to which my constituents have looked forward for a long time. That hospital site would be transferred to the Thameslink Healthcare Services NHS trust, which is already working on an £8 million PFI project to bring that about.
Mr. Edward O'Hara (Knowsley, South):
I was minded to comment on the unfortunate speech of the hon. Member who, for the time being, represents Basildon, but I am happy now to regard that as a distant memory. I am, however, delighted to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Trickett) is resuming his seat alongside me because I now have the opportunity to congratulate him personally on an excellent, elegant and well-judged maiden speech with which I associate myself in general terms and in the particular--his gracious remarks about his predecessor.
I have my own fond memories of my hon. Friend's predecessor's charm, humour, bonhomie and presence and I have my particular reasons for remembering him with much fondness and regret. We were the two classicists on the Labour Benches. It is a little known fact that we
shared a secret--as young teachers we both translated the songs of the Beatles into Latin in separate songbooks. Mine ranged from "Amat te mehercle", which non-latinists might just about recognise as "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah" and "Veni domum Bill Bailey", which needs no translation.
I did not know of my late hon. Friend's service to relations with Portugal, but I knew from close quarters the excellent work that he did for relations with Greece and Cyprus, and it is to a matter of great importance to the people of Cyprus that I wish draw the House's attention today--the people who are still listed as missing since the invasions of 1974. We know the statistics. There are 1,619 names on the list and, if the House will allow me, I shall give a few personal details about several of them because they are not just statistics but individuals.
The following is the evidence of one Lambis Elia from the village of Hartsia:
after the invasions,
that also should be noted--
Andreas Nicodemos, of the village of Trimithi in the occupied Kyrenia district, was a reservist during the invasion. He was taken prisoner and transferred, with others, to Adana prison in Turkey. On 20 or 21 August 1974, he was taken out into the yard, where he heard someone call his name. The person who called him was someone he knew--his co-villager Kyriakos Frixou--who is now missing. They shook hands and spoke but, since then, nothing has been heard of him.
I have here a famous photograph that was developed from film taken by a Turkish journalist who was covering the invasion and was wounded and captured by the Greek national guard. The picture shows some Greek Cypriot prisoners kneeling under armed guard. Five have been identified. I shall read out their names because they are individuals. They are Korellis Antonakis tou Michaeli from Kythrea, Nicolaou Paniccos tou Chrysostomou from Achna, Skordis Christoforos tou Georghiou from Dhali, Papayiannis Ioannis tou Charalambous from Anglandjia and Hadjikyriakos Philippos tou Stephani from Famagusta.
I also have copies of photographs of other missing people, but I shall not read out any more names as that would burden the House. However, I have a photograph that was published in a Turkish publication and shows a visit by the Turkish Red Crescent to a prisoner of war camp. It shows four identifiable individuals alive in prison in Turkey--but they are now missing. I also have two pictures
from a BBC documentary, again taken at Adana prison. They show four individuals who have been identified and who were alive and well but who are now missing.
There are 1,619 missing people, of whom 992 were reservists--prisoners of war caught fighting--but 627 of them were civilians. Of the total, 1,503 were men and 116 women. The sad thing is that, although among the older age groups 315 were over 60 and 241 were between 40 and 60, 1,036 were between 16 and 39--the active miliary age group--and 27, including two girls, were under 16.
There has been much public condemnation of the fact that people who were known to be alive in custody are still posted as missing and their fate is unknown. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe considered the matter in September 1984, as did many other international bodies. It discussed the Verde report, which was endorsed. Mr. Verde wrote:
any of which terms accurately describes the situation in Cyprus at that time.
The House will note that the Verde report refers to the rights of the families of missing people. It is on the agony of the families that I want to dwell for a few moments. To understand their agony, we must have a little insight into their southern European, Greek orthodox culture. In that culture, family ties extend widely and deeply. It is often jokingly said that, in Cyprus, everyone is everyone else's cousin--that is the latitudinal family tie.
Longitudinally, it is interesting to note the extent of the use of the patronymic. The endings "-idis", as in Christophides, "-akis" and "-opoulos" are all patronymic endings. It will be noted that the simple genitive case is often used as a surname, as in Georgiou, which means son of George or "George son". This feature is, perhaps, common in other cultures, but people in Cyprus have another interesting custom, which is to pass on Christian names from grandfather to grandson. The son of Charalambous Kotziamanis is a dear friend of a number of us in the House--Nikos Charalambous Kotziamanis--whose eldest son is Charalambous Kotziamanis, and so it will continue.
That family tradition is echoed in the formalised remembrance of the dead. There are services after three days, after 40 days--the Sarandaimeron, which is very important--after three months, after six months, after 12 months and annually thereafter. Connected with that is the importance of the family grave in the ancestral village. Indeed, the very word "cemetery", or koimeterion, means the place where the dead rest or sleep.
The distress felt by the 180,000 refugees is caused not just by the loss of their property, but by the loss of their ancestral villages. One need only observe the multitude of village associations that exist in the London Greek Cypriot community to appreciate that. In such a culture, uncertainty about the fate of loved ones and the denial of the experience of bereavement is particularly painful. Those loved ones are not at rest; people hope against hope for their return, setting places for them at family celebrations such as weddings. Anyone who has observed
a public meeting of refugees cannot have failed to be moved by the sight of old women holding up photographs of those whose fate is still unknown--agnooumeni, or missing people.
That is why the recent pronouncement of the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, was so particularly brutal. He said that the "unknown" were all dead--that the Turkish army had handed them over to Turkish paramilitaries in the aftermath of the invasion of 1974, and that the paramilitaries had put them to death. I am not certain how that can have been done to people who were in prison in Turkey.
It is not clear what Rauf Denktash intended. Did he intend to clear Turkey of responsibility for those people's fate, or simply to close the issue? Whatever his purpose, the attempt failed. If Turkey handed over prisoners of war to paramilitaries, that was wrong, and a violation of international conventions. If Turkey wants to be absolved, it must provide the necessary information. The problem for Turkey is the evidence that I gave in my opening remarks--evidence of the known existence of many of the people involved after the cessation of hostilities.
Rauf Denktash's remarks did not close the issue. They make no difference to the requirement that the fate of the missing people--the fate of as many individuals as is humanly possible--must be revealed to their families, to whom they continue to be dearly loved sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, or just missing friends.
I shall read a poem by another dear friend of some hon. Members, Michaelis Xenophontos Joannou--son of Xenophon. The poem is entitled "To A Missing Friend".
The United Kingdom has many interests in the matter--as a guarantor of power, as a member of the Commonwealth and as a country in which many relatives of the missing people have settled, joining the Greek Cypriot community here. Some of the missing people had dual nationality: I am aware of at least one. Earlier this week, I presented my Cyprus (Commission of Enquiry into Missing Persons) Bill, the aim of which is to
The Bill's Second Reading is to take place on 12 July, but I have an opportunity today to rehearse briefly the case for the establishment of the commission.
"I don't call it a Private Finance Initiative, I call it a privatisation initiative."
"Any banker would be unwise to enter into a contract valued at hundreds of millions of pounds with a public sector partner that can be abolished by the Secretary of State".--[Official Report, 12 March 1996; Vol. 273, c. 825.]
"On 13.9.1974",
"the Turks arrested my two sons, Michael aged 17, and Elia aged 19, and took them to their camp near our village. On the same day I met the Turkish Cypriot, Nazim Ahmet, aged 60, who is a friend of mine"--
"and I asked him to take me to the Turkish Army Officer. He did take me and the following day on the 14.9.1974, the Turkish Officer allowed me to see my sons for ten minutes. The next day . . . the Officer allowed me to see them again and this time I was with my wife. We saw them for some time in the Turkish camp where they were being held.
On 16.9.74 around two o'clock in the afternoon a party of the International Red Cross came to our village. I told them about the arrest of my sons and I led them to the area of the Turkish camp. Unfortunately, however, the Turkish Army Officer denied that he was holding any prisoners and did not allow the Red Cross to carry out an investigation.
Since then, nothing has become known about the fate of my two sons".
"Enforced disappearance is one of the most serious violations of the human rights safeguarded by international instruments: it infringes virtually all the victims' personal rights and many of the rights of their families. The violations are also contrary to the 1949 Geneva conventions and cannot be justified by special circumstances, whether armed conflict, state of emergency or internal unrest or tension"--
"Where were you lost my friend
Where do you roam at this hour?
In which dungeon are you kept prisoner
Or have you been buried
In an unknown grave
Without a cross?
'Missing' they said
And they took down all details
Whilst life continued its road.
I always see you, though,
On the football terrace
Standing and smiling at me . . .
In vain I try to explain
That bitter smile on your face."
"establish a Commission of Enquiry to take evidence concerning the whereabouts of certain missing persons and to authorise the provision of assistance in the conduct of any investigations into those matters carried out by the authorities on the island of Cyprus; and for connected purposes."
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