Speech of the General Secretary of the C.C. of AKEL Andros Kyprianou at the bi-communal event “We dance and sing for reunification and peace”

3rd July 2015, People’s Park, Limassol

On behalf of the C.C. of AKEL I convey a warm greeting to tonight’s event. I warmly congratulate the Local Club “Olymbos” of the People’s Movement of the Left of the Ayios Nicolas neighbourhood for taking this initiative. I also address a warm greeting to the Olymbos group and the Turkish Cypriot group TUFAN. This evening these two cultural groups will rekindle the memory of the older generations of that period when the joy and the dance of the Greek Cypriot were also the joy and the dance of his/her Turkish Cypriot neighbour and brother/sister, and vice-versa. Tonight these two groups will let the younger generations know that whether Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Maronites, Armenians, Latins, we all dearly love our homeland the same. We sing the same yearning and longing for Cyprus and our children; we dance with the same happiness for our country and for the future we want to build together.
Everybody knows that AKEL has been fiercely attacked because it dared talk about the need for the rapprochement of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots after the betrayal of 1974. AKEL fought to persuade about the correctness of this position. It managed to keep the perspective for the peaceful cohabitation between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots alive.
Certain forces and circles – even today – refer in a degrading way to the long-standing and timeless relations of the Left with the Turkish Cypriots, frequently accusing us with many “colourful” adjectives. We ignore them. We insist on defending the historical truth, but also the future of our homeland. We persist in talking with courage also about the true history of our country; about the mass graves that our homeland’s earth hides, full of the remains of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. We insist on talking about the people brutally murdered by the extremists in both communities; murdered by people with the same ideological identity. We insist until today in talking about the betrayal and the traitors; about the crime committed and the criminals.
There are other forces and circles who insist on using arguments like “the Cyprus problem won’t be solved by meetings and gatherings between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots”. As AKEL we had and uphold the position that the movement for rapprochement has and must have a political content.
At the same time, we have a vision for our people: for the reunified Republic of Cyprus to be the common house of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. We aim to fulfill this goal through our long-standing policy on the Cyprus problem. This vision was the goal of the Christofias governance with the proposals that were submitted at the negotiating table; proposals that abolish ethnic confrontation, tear down the barriers that they wanted to force us to live side-by-side and proposals that talked about the Cyprus of the future where Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots will live and struggle TOGETHER.
This is our vision for Cyprus and we are ready to devote all our energies and forces to the fulfillment of this goal!