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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 4706 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

searching desperately for their loved ones among the prisoners of war returning from prisons in Turkey. Finally, it was the Cypriot women who participated in many peaceful demonstrations organised by the movement "Women walk home".

Another member who has told his story was an eight-year-old boy in 1974. It was 6.30 am when his father woke to the sounds of the radio broadcast announcing a general mobilisation of all able-bodied men who had served in the military. He later saw his father getting dressed in his army uniform. He further recalls hearing a plane passing over their house, and his father saying that it was not a British plane-in reference to the planes that the British had in their military base on the island. He learned later that the plane was Turkish and that it had dropped parachuters some distance away.

Two weeks had passed by the time he saw his father again. He came back to take the family away to the mountains as the Turks were planning the second phase of the incursion which led to the occupation of most of the territory. When the boy returned to his village a few days later, the primary school was turned over as living quarters for the refugees.

Another community member who has lived in Canberra since 1989 recalls that it was August 1978 when their family migrated to Melbourne for a better life. He was a 19-year-old Cypriot doing his military service when the Turkish occupation took place, having been told that foreign ships were approaching the Famagusta port on the night of 19 July 1974. Following the occupation, he did not see his family for almost three months, with his parents not knowing for two months that he was alive. And it was during the incursion that many of his friends were killed. He spent two more years in the army, most of this time not being able to visit his family more than once every couple of months. Following the completion of his studies in England, he then moved to Australia.

Finally, from a family member with two young children, who recalls the time prior to the occupation when he was living in Famagusta: they were awakened at 5 o'clock in the morning of 20 July 1974 by the bombing raids carried out by Turkish planes. During the second phase of the occupation, they left their house with only some clothing and stayed away from their home for three or four days, having fled to a neighbouring village where they spent their first night with some friends.

As the next day was 15 August 1974, a special religious day in the Orthodox Church, the entire family went to church, but the service was interrupted halfway through and everybody had to gather their families and leave the church. They proceeded to a city on the south of the island where they were given blankets, clothing and food. Life became even more difficult without any money. It was nine months later before they left Cyprus and arrived in Australia.

Mr Speaker, I understand that members of Canberra's Cypriot community are grateful for the support that successive Australian federal, state and territory governments have shown on the Cyprus issue and hope that at every opportunity they will work to find a peaceful resolution to the matter.

In bringing this motion to the Assembly today, I trust that we will contribute to the collective efforts that have been taken to date across Australia. I also trust that the Assembly's efforts will provide the community in Canberra with a sense of hope,

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