AKEL pays tribute and respects the memory of Makarios

 

3 August 2023, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia

AKEL pays tribute to and respects the memory of the first President of the Republic of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, who passed away 46 years ago today. Makarios, the most emblematic figure in the modern history of Cyprus, identified his name and figure with our homeland, its people and its struggles.

AKEL honors and commemorates Makarios with respect, but does not succumb to his idealization, nor does it downplay whatever wrong choices and assessments he made. On the contrary, we believe that we ought to judge, analyse and draw lessons from the mistakes Makarios committed.

However, what we do not accept is the insulting falsification of the historical truth. Furthermore, we denounce – as the House of Representatives did with the Resolution it approved in December 2022 – “the equation of the lawful government of Makarios and the forces of democracy with the terror of EOKA B, either through the glorification of the leader and other members of the EOKA B and the coupist ‘government’ as heroes or through the ideological incrimination of the non-aligned policy pursued by the Republic of Cyprus for the tragedy that took place in 1974”.

This falsification of the historical truth serves evident political considerations. On the one hand, it seeks to exonerate the far right for the betrayal of our homeland it committed so that it can sow its inhuman ideas among society today and undermine any prospect of a solution to the Cyprus problem. On the other hand, it also seeks to erase from History the role played by NATO in the bloody massacre of Cyprus.

AKEL honors the memory of Makarios by defending the truth about the history of Cyprus and by continuing the struggle to prevent the 1974 crime committed against Cyprus from definitively being completed.