Cyprus News Agency: News in English, 08-08-25

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From: The Cyprus News Agency at <http://www.cyna.org.cy>

CONTENTS

[01] EXHIBITION - OCCUPIED RELIGIOUS SITES

[02] ARCHBISHOP CHRYSOSTOMOS ZAKYNTHOS

[01] EXHIBITION - OCCUPIED RELIGIOUS SITES

The exhibition falls in the framework of the 29th World Meeting, titled Protagonists or Absents, organised by the Institute Meeting for friendship among the peoples.

According to a press release, the exhibition aims to responsibly inform and sensitise the European and the world community of scientists, in order to exert pressure on the occupation regime in Cyprus to allow the Church of Cyprus, the legal owner of the Orthodox churches, to restore and renovate the churches.

Bishop of Kykkos and Tylliria Nikiforos, the brain behind the exhibition, noted that we cannot turn our back on that deliberate and ongoing cultural destruction, and we have no other option but to mobilize on a global scale in order to put an end to the destruction of that European and universal cultural heritage in Turkish occupied Cyprus.

Bishop Nikiforos pointed out that the exhibition is not against the Turkish Cypriot community, which is also in captivity.

We respect, appreciate and love our Turkish Cypriot compatriots, and we wish to live with them peacefully under a free, united and independent democratic country, he added.

The exhibition consists of 100 photographs of churches, monasteries and chapels in the northern Turkish occupied areas. More than 500 Greek Orthodox churches in the occupied part of the island have been destroyed or damages and many religious artifacts have been removed and sold on the black market.

[02] ARCHBISHOP CHRYSOSTOMOS ZAKYNTHOS

The Archbishop, who is currently in the Greek island of Zakynthos for the feast day of St. Dionysios, patron saint of the island, said that Europe and the US remain cold hearted as regards the impingement of the human rights of the people of Cyprus, the Turkish occupation of 37% of the islands territory and the destruction and looting of Christian Orthodox Churches in the occupied part of the country.

We pray to St Dionysios, the Saint of love and forgiveness, to help the powerful ones on earth to give justice to the tried people of Cyprus, ahead of the commencement of direct negotiations between the leaders of the two communities in Cyprus, aiming at reunifying the island, divided since the Turkish invasion of 1974, he said.

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