Honor and glory to those who resisted fascism!
AKEL on the Day of Democratic Resistance
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 6th December 2019, Nicosia
December 7th, the day of President Makarios’ return to Cyprus following the fascist coup d’état of 15th July 1974, has been and will remain a historic landmark for our country. On 7th December 1974, the Cypriot people took to the streets in huge numbers to welcome the democratically-elected President to Cyprus and the Presidency, despite all the machinations both inside and outside Cyprus, to prevent his return.
This development represented a triumphant victory of the people and of the people’s anti-fascist and anti-imperialist struggle, the driving force of which was AKEL and the other democratic forces.
It was the expression of the universal will of our people that it would not compromise with the foreign plans for the division our homeland and its submission to NATO.
It was the voice of the betrayed and suffering Cypriot people demonstrating that the betrayal of the Greek Junta and EOKA B would remain forever unpardonable.
The Cypriot people owe a great debt and gratitude to all those who resisted fascism in July 1974, at the bastions of Democracy that put up resistance at the Presidential Palace, the Archdiocese, the “Eftapato” crossing and Third Secondary High School of Limassol, Kolossi, Pafos, the working class neighbourhoods of Ayi Yianni in Larnaca and Kaimakli in Nicosia and every corner of Cyprus where our people – others armed and elsewhere unarmed – defended democratic legality.
It owes a great debt and gratitude to those who did not yield or stood up to the coupists under interrogation and who were tortured; to the people of Cyprus who were the major protagonists in the mass mobilizations against the Greek junta and EOKA B.
The preservation of historical memory and defence of the historical truth is a self-evident duty for every State that respects itself. It is the eternal debt to the young generation who is entitled to know the true history of our country. However, in the years that DISY and Nikos Anastasiades have been in power not only aren’t the necessary tributes being paid to the Democratic Resistance fighters, not only is the current anniversary and the sacred memory of the Resistance to the Greek junta/EOKA B not being respected, but at various levels, there is an attempt underway to falsify History and to whitewash the traitors as heroes. Of course, the government ruling forces should have realized, so many decades later, that our people’s memory is stronger than the operations to distort and revise History by the Right and the ultra-right.
AKEL commemorates the Day of Remembrance and Honor of the Democratic Resistance by pledging that it will remain a defender of History and our people’s struggles; by pledging that it will remain at the forefront so that the crime that was committed in 1974 will not prevail finally, so that the Democratic Resistance is vindicated with the liberation and reunification of our country and people.
