The government is called upon to protect the lives and property of citizens from ultra-right violence

 

 

Statement by the General Secretary of AKEL Stefanos Stefanou

Demonstration in Limassol on Monday

2 September 2023, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia

The racist pogrom that took place yesterday in Limassol is a disgrace to the country and the state, and will be written in our country’s murky pages. Attacks were waged on defenseless foreign workers and their establishments. The attacks on unsuspecting citizens are brazen and inhuman. Equally reprehensible are the attacks on mass media workers who were covering the developments.

The government and the police bear a grave responsibility and must be held accountable because they permitted these gangs of hooded thugs to attack Cypriots and foreigners, destroy and engage in looting in the centre of Limassol undisturbed.

They bear a grave responsibility and must be held accountable because they refuse to enforce the laws on organised hate rhetoric and incitement to violence that has for some days now been poisoning society to explosive levels.

The President of the Republic and the government must give an answer to citizens as to whether they will continue to tolerate far-right violence even for a single day more. Mr. President, it is your and your government’s responsibility to protect the lives and property of all citizens.

The responsibilities of those political forces that for years now, but even more so recently, have been indulging in xenophobic rhetoric or projecting half-truths, are also grave by providing alibis, encouraging and “normalizing” the extreme right.

The country is at a breaking point and we all need to understand what we are really confronting. The moral and physical perpetrators of the pogroms are not expressing “positions” or “concerns” about immigration, but instead exploiting and vulgarly misinforming [the people] about immigration, as they do and will do on every other issue. They do not want security, but threaten the security of the country and its people. This is not simply hooliganism, but about fascism that threatens democracy and the Cypriot people as a whole.

Cyprus was destroyed in the past by a fascist, fanatical minority. We cannot permit the same thing to happen again. All of us who demand zero tolerance for far-right violence have a duty to defend democratic principles, the true values of our people, namely solidarity and humanity, but also what unites the working people of this country regardless of nationality, religion and language.

For all these reasons, AKEL calls on the people to participate in the mass mobilisation it is organising next Monday, at 7:00 in the evening, at the Administrative Centre Square in Limassol.