AKEL ON ATHENS POLYTECHNIC UPRISING ANNIVERSARY
AKEL C.C Press Office, 16th November 2013, Nicosia
As AKEL, we honour the 40th anniversary of the uprising of the heroic young people at the Athens Polytechnic in 1973. This year sees the 40th anniversary since that day that Greek youth courageously stood up and confronted fascism and the tanks of the foreign-instigated Junta of Athens demanding “Bread – Education – Freedom” National Independence and Popular Sovereignty.
AKEL honours the heroic dead of the Polytechnic who watered with their blood the tree of freedom, democracy and progress. The student uprising on 17th November 1973 was the culmination of the anti-dictatorial struggle of the Greek people. The Polytechnic, despite the bloody suppression of the uprising, was the beginning of the end of the seven year junta. Unfortunately, the price of this development was heavy. The final collapse of the junta came after it had managed to devise and later committed, together with EOKA B, the horrendous crime against Cyprus and its people.
40 years after the Athens Polytechnic uprising, the slogan “BREAD – EDUCATION – FREEDOM – NATIONAL INDEPENDANCE” is still more than ever relevant. The Polytechnic uprising lives on in the struggles of today; in the struggles for freedom, peace, democracy and social justice. The Polytechnic uprising continues to show the way to the people to believe in its own forces, to challenge the logic of the Memorandum dead-ends and organize the resistance against the policies of austerity and misery; the abolition of workers gains and the welfare state; the selling-off of national wealth to the local and foreign capital and the revival of fascism.
The Polytechnic has demonstrated that the people and youth when they raise their militant stature can intervene and decide developments. The events of the Polytechnic constantly remind us that we have to fight for a truly independent and free Cyprus; it reminds us that we have to fight in order not to surrender to anyone our sovereignty and our people’s social achievements which have been won through struggle and many sacrifices. It reminds us that we should fight with the same determination against fascism in all its forms and against the right-wing ideologies that trying to raise their heads exploiting today the crisis of capitalism.
Today certain forces and circles want us to forget the black seven years of the fascist junta. They want to erase from the memory of the people the events of November 1973 and the causes that gave birth to the Polytechnic uprising. They want to hide the truth about the role of NATO and the plutocracy in the 7 year old dictatorship. They want the crime and treason against Cyprus, which was executed by the junta of Athens in cooperation with EOKA B, to be forgotten.
As AKEL, we will resist with all our strength these forces and circles in their attempts at the distortion, revision and deletion of the historical truth about the junta of Greece, the heroic uprising of the Polytechnic, the anti-dictatorship struggle and the betrayal of Cyprus, so that the policy of deliberate forgetfulness will not allow the instigators and those responsible for the Cyprus tragedy not to clear and exonerate themselves or be restored in any way.
So that there will not be any room for setbacks: neither with deviations from our just demands for a solution to the Cyprus problem, nor any regressions by pinning hopes on forging alliances with NATO, which supported by all means those who committed crimes against Cyprus and Greece.
On the occasion of the anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising, AKEL conveys a warm greeting to the Greek people, who continuing to experience from the tragic results of the global capitalist crisis and suffer from the policies of impoverishment being imposed by the Troika. As AKEL, we express our full support and solidarity with the struggling Greek people.
