AKEL on the 56th anniversary of the 21 April 1967 military coup

 

The biggest betrayals appear dressed in the cloak of “national-mindedness”

21 April 2023, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia

The 56th anniversary of the 21 April 1967 military coup d’état brings to mind one of the painful pages of the modern history of Greece. The Greek people remember the fascist regime that was imposed on them for seven years. The Cypriot people remember the culprit of the betrayal that was committed against it and the subsequent destruction.

The people of Cyprus do not forget that it was to the Greek junta regime that the USA and NATO entrusted the task of diving our country and transforming it into a NATO base. That is precisely why the Greek junta had targeted the very existence of the Republic of Cyprus, President Makarios and, of course, AKEL from the very beginning. The Greek junta  conspiracy reached its climax in the summer of 1974 with the organisation and execution, together with EOKA B, of the coup d’état against President Makarios, which put into effect the plan hatched against Cyprus by massacring our people and handing over half of our island to Turkey. The black history of Greek junta and EOKA B fascism remains irrefutable evidence that the biggest betrayals appear dressed in the cloak of national-mindedness.

AKEL points out that the crime of the Greek Junta against Cyprus can neither be forgotten, nor erased. However, it can and must be reversed and for that reason the permanent partition of Cyprus must not be permitted. We must struggle to the very end to achieve the liberation and reunification of our homeland, with a solution to the Cyprus problem on the agreed basis and framework.

On the occasion of the anniversary of the 21 April 1967 coup d’état, AKEL pays tribute to the movement of the anti-dictatorship struggle, to the fighters who confronted the fascist regime in the prisons and islands where anti-fascist were exiled, in the interrogation and torture chambers, against the censorship and junta informers.

We honor with them our own compatriot Giorgos Tsikouris and his Italian comrade Maria – Elena Angeloni who sacrificed their lives in September 1970 in the anti-junta struggle. We honor and salute the fraternal Greek people, with their history full of struggles and sacrifices for democracy and freedom.