Nicosia: As a country that experienced invasion, occupation, and ethnic cleansing, supports the universal restoration of historical truth, the international recognition of the heinous crime of the genocide of the Pontic Greeks by the Turkish state, and the moral vindication of Hellenism everywhere, Acting House President Zacharias Koulias said.
According to Cyprus News Agency, in a statement before the Plenary on the occasion of May 19, the Day of Remembrance of the Pontic Greeks Genocide, Koulias mentioned that the memory of “the systematic and violent extermination, by Kemal Ataturk, of hundreds of thousands of Pontians and the barbaric eradication of Pontic Hellenism from its ancient cradle and ancestral homes” is being honored.
He highlighted that there was a coordinated plan for mass persecutions and displacements that manifested as massacres, rapes, burning and destruction of cities and villages, labor battalions, persecutions inland, as well as disappearances of persons, with the aim of the physical extermination and annihilation of foreigners.
The Plenary observed a minute of silence to honor the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Pontic Greeks.