AKEL on anniversary of 1967 Greek military junta coup d’état

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 20 April 2018, Nicosia

The anniversary of the 21 April 1967 junta coup d’état in Greece represents a black page in the history of the Greek and Cypriot people. On the occasion of this anniversary AKEL pays homage and honors all the fighters of the anti-junta struggle in Greece and Cyprus.

The military Junta of Athens imposed a brutal dictatorial regime with imprisonments, torture, exile, military courts, the prosecution of trade union struggle, censorship of the press and the Arts, promotion of a state of informants, in combination with widespread corruption and an economic policy characterized by the provocative “assistances” provided to domestic and US big capital. It should also be recalled that under the slogan of “Greek-Christian ideals” and “Greece of Greek Christians,” the junta systematically conducted anticommunist and chauvinist propaganda at the same time of course as the country was suffering under the subservient to the US regime and when the Greek Junta was negotiating with Turkey to sell-out Cyprus.

Besides it is well-known – as AKEL had warned during the very days of the junta coup d’etat – that the masters of the dictatorship had assigned it the the task of promoting the submission and surrender of Cyprus to NATO through the undermining of the independent Republic of Cyprus and the subversion of the Makarios government which was resisting the plans for the division of our island. The organization and execution of the fascist coup d’etat of 15 July 1974 by the Greek Junta, in cooperation with the Greek Cypriot EOKA B organization, was its conscious complicity in the plan for the partition of Cyprus, which of course was completed with the invasion and occupation by Turkey.

The junta and the junta forces were neither “foolish”, nor were they “deceived” by anyone. They were conscious enemies of Cyprus and its people. And that’s precisely how they will forever go down in History, as well as in the people’s consciousness.

The crime committed by the Greek Junta against Cyprus cannot be forgotten or deleted. It can however be reversed with the liberation and reunification of Cyprus and its people; with the definitive isolation of its neo-fascist descendants, of nationalism-chauvinism.