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TechnoratiFurthermore, over 15,000 portable religious icons were stolen and auctioned off around the world.
Relics – which include fine icons, mosaics and frescoes from ancient Byzantine era – have turned up at auction houses around the world, including at the prestigious Sotheby’s in New York.
In January 2007, six icons were returned to the Church of Cyprus after being smuggled out of the country. They were to be put up for auction at Sotheby’s.
Also, back in 1988, four pieces of an invaluable work of art dating between 525 and 530 A.D. were recovered when a Turkish art dealer offered to sell it to an American antique dealer for $1 million. The American dealer contacted the Paul Getty Museum in Malibu to resell the mosaics for $20 million. The museum then informed the Cypriot Church about the art work.
In the end, U.S. courts ruled that the Cypriot Church was the legitimate owner of the pieces, and they are now shown in the Byzantine Museum of Nicosia.
It is estimated that more than 60,000 ancient artifacts have been illegally transferred to other countries, according to the Republic of Cyprus. Sadly, most of these artifacts were not recovered.
Cyprus has some of the finest collections of Byzantine art in the world, offering scholars and others the priceless study on the development of Byzantine wall-painting art from the 8th-9th century until the 18th century A.D.
The United States has recognized Cyprus’ endangered cultural heritage, and in 1999 and 2003 the U.S. Treasury Department issued emergency import restrictions on Byzantine Ecclesiastical and Ritual Ethnological Materials from Cyprus.
Then, in 2002, the United States and Cyprus signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) concerning the import restrictions on pre-classical and classical archeological objects from Cyprus. The MOU was amended and renewed in 2006 and 2007 to include additional artifacts.
Kakouris says that the Cyprus issue has been ignored for decades by the international community.
“There is only so much oxygen that exists from a journalistic point of view,” he noted. “When one picks up the paper and looks at international issues what does one see? Either a bombing that took place in the Middle East or a bombing in Iraq or loss of life in Afghanistan – issues such as that."
“Although there are issues that appear to be more important than the Cyprus issue – because we don’t have that immediacy of seeing deaths or events on a daily basis in Cyprus, thankfully – that does not make the continuing occupation by Turkey of the northern part of Cyprus any more acceptable,” the ambassador added.
There were 20,000 Greek Cypriots in the Turkish-controlled area after 1974, but today there are about 450 Greek Cypriots remaining. Over 80 percent of the Republic of Cyprus population is Christian.
While the island population is only 800,000, it is a major tourist attraction, drawing over 2 million tourists each year.
