AKEL on the 76 years since the Antifascist Victory of the Peoples: The power of the peoples crushed and will crush fascism again
9th May, the day of the Antifascist Victory of the Peoples that ended the Second World War, is a landmark in humanity’s history and in the universal struggle for freedom and democracy.
AKEL pays tribute to the peoples of the world and to the anti-fascist alliance that was forged back then, which crushed Hitler-fascism and saved human civilization. We honor the democrats and anti-fascists who fought in the Resistance movements throughout Europe. We recognize the leading contribution of the Soviet Union, which, with the sacrifice of tens of millions of Soviet people, decided the outcome of the war and sealed the triumph of humanity and peace.
The young generations of Cyprus have the right to be taught and need to know our country’s contribution to the great confrontation of History. Thousands of Cypriot combatants – Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots – enlisted to fight in the enormous battle of the peoples and sacrificed their lives on the battlefields.
AKEL, from the moment it was founded exactly 80 years ago, joined the anti-Nazi camp and identified itself as a “Democratic, Antifascist, Anti-Hitler” party. The decision of the C.C. of AKEL on 16th June 1943, with which hundreds of AKEL militants and members voluntarily joined the army to fight fascism, is a badge of honor in the History of our Party and of Cyprus.
At the same time, today we remember what fascism means.
We remember the Holocaust, the concentration camps, the Nazi atrocities committed in the occupied countries, the martyrdoms suffered by the people of Greece during the years of Nazi occupation.
We recall that fascism’s inhumane ideology sought to rate people and nations as |”superior” and others not. Fascism is not another point of view in a democracy that we should respect, but the most rotten history has left behind it and the more dangerous the system has given birth to and precisely for these reasons it must be eradicated.
We remember that anti-communism, the falsification of history and xenophobia pave the way to the ultra-right and fascism that are again threatening democracy, human rights, social and worker’s gains and peace.
Seventy-six years onwards, the Red flag over the German Reichstag reminds us and demonstrates that fascism was not, nor is it invincible; that the power of the peoples as it crushed then, so it will crush fascism once again, but also the system that gives birth to it.
