Speech by AKEL Parliamentary Representative G. Loukaides at the event in memory and honour of the four Heroes of Agios Tychonas at the Holy Church of St George

 

15 July 2024, Lazania village

Half a century since that black summer of 1974, our country and people once again recall the events of that period. Every year on such days, the tragic moments that marked the history of our country return even more vividly to our minds. To the refugee tents, to the mothers clad in black with the photos of their sons as prisoners of war and their missing children, to the barbed wire that still divides our island in two, to the rivers of blood that have  been shed. To the devastation and destruction.

Our memory inevitably recalls the faces of those who are still missing and who sacrificed their lives for our homeland.

To the heroes of Democracy who stood up to block the path of the American-engineered coup of the Greek Junta and Grivas’ EOKA B.

To the heroes who answered the patriotic call and breathed their last breath resisting the onslaught of the Turkish invading army of Attila, in an unequal and betrayed struggle.

Among them, is the hero of the village of Lazania who we commemorate and honor today, Pantelakis Charalambous and with him, Charalambos and Tasos Christofi and Christakis Combos, whom fate has united them forever.

Pantelakis Charalambous was born in 1954 and was the sixth of the nine children of Charalambos and Theodosia, poor shepherds who struggled to feed their large member family. Due to the enormous financial problems they faced, the industrious Pantelakis was forced to leave school as soon as he finished primary school and enter early into the harsh world of making ends meet and hard graft.

Tasos Christofi was 22 years old when he was murdered by the traitors of EOKA B and his brother, Charalambos, 25. Both from the village of Fikardo, both raised in a large member family, active and dynamic characters.

Christakis Kombos was 24 years old from Limassol, a member of the Special Reserve Corps [formed by Makarios to fight the underground EOKA B organisation as the Police Force was infiltrated by pro-Greek junta forces]. His decision to join the Reserve Corps proved to be fatal.

From 15 July 1974, when the traitor coupists overthrew the legitimate government, until the temporary ceasefire by the Turkish army occupiers, every region of Cyprus had its own story to tell. Its own battle and its own heroes.

Of traitors who turned their guns on the legitimate government of their own country. Of heroes who resisted the treason, of heroes who defended the territorial integrity of the country from the foreign occupiers.

During the execution of the coup, on the morning of 15 July 1974, the main target of the sworn traitors was the Presidential Palace. There, the heroic battle of the loyal Special Reserve Corps against the coupists wrote a golden page in the history of our democratic resistance. The titanic effort of the Reserve Corps gave President Makarios the opportunity and time to escape and continue to lead the legitimate institutions of the country.

In recording the events of Makarios’ escape and the resistance, the village of Lazania had its own representation, as Pantelakis Charalambous, an inhabitant of Lazania, linked the name of your community to the chronicle of the Cypriot tragedy. He linked his name and that of Lazania to the fate of the four heroic Martyrs of democracy, whose murder is one of the most tragic testimonies of the horrific crimes the EOKA B terror committed.

Christakis Kombos, a member of the Special Reserve Corps, took part in the fighting at the Presidential Palace during the coup attack on 15 July and subsequently accompanied Makarios on his escape route to Kykkos and then Pafos.

On arriving at the village of Klirou, the policeman Giorgos Vryonii Vrudos claimed to be ill and President Makarios instructed Kombos to stay behind and accompany Vrudos to Limassol.

They took refuge in a house and changed their military for civilian clothes and were then arrested, interrogated by members of EOKA B and released. They escaped to the village of Fikardo, where the brothers Charalambos and Anastasis Christofi, together with their friend Pantelakis Charalambous, offered to drive them to Limassol.

At the Parekklisia area, they fell upon an EOKA B checkpoint. Gunmen arrested them and began to interrogate them. A short time later the lawyer Andreas Neocleous from Limassol, who was on his way to Nicosia to take the oath of office as a “Minister” in the coupist “government” of Samson, happened to pass by. He was from the same village as Vrudos, who recognised him and asked them to let him go to the Polemidion camp to give a certain person information about Makarios. He claimed that he did indeed go and returned on the afternoon of 16 July to the place where he left the other four prisoners. Based on the same claim, he said that he did not find them there and that the EOKA B coupists told him that they had been taken elsewhere by bus.

But in fact they were taken to the house of a former policeman in Amathus. There, they were “tried” and sentenced to death. Before they were taken to the Vathi Arkadzii area in Agios Tychonas to be executed, they were brutally tortured. In Agios Tychonas they were executed in cold blood and buried in a makeshift garbage dump. The murderers stood the two brothers facing the mountain and the other two facing the sea and gunned them down with machine guns. In fact, as Stelios Patatas later pointed out at the trial of the seven people arrested for the murder, the killers of the four were celebrating their heinous crime intensely.

The parents did not know what had happened to their children. After 20 days of searching, the grave of their murder was found.

A relative of Christakis Kombou had received a tip that an execution had indeed taken place at the garbage dump and began searching the site. He searched the area several times until he discovered a human hand sticking out of the ground – a sign of the crude “burying” the heroes had been given by the shameful traitors. The hand was that of Christakis Kombou.

The four heroes were buried in a mass grave in the Agios Nikolaos cemetery in Limassol. In 2022, 48 years after their gruesome murder, the families of Pantelakis and the Christofi brothers decided to exhume and transfer their remains to their hometowns, Lazania and Fikardou respectively, where they were buried with the proper honours befitting Heroes.

Dear friends,

1974 is the most tragic moment in our country’s modern history. At the time when extreme right-wing agents of NATO and the Greek Junta turned their guns on democracy and legitimacy, simultaneously opened the back door for the Turkish invading army of Attila to invade and partition our island.

On the other side, we had humanity, pure and undaunted patriotism, common people who did not carry great titles but who exhibited an inexhaustible greatness of soul and courage. With their simplicity, they carried the greatest badge of honour. That of the patriot. Pantelakis, Christakis, Anastasis and Charalambos were such patriots and acted so.

Today we commemorate the four Heroes, but in their name we also honour every patriot, resistance fighter and democratic person who did not give up in the critical hour, did not hide in the Troodos mountains as the pseudo patriots did. We honour each and every one who stood up and became a bastion to prevent the fascism of treason and the barbarism of Attila.

To all of them, but also to the future generations, we have a historical duty not to permit a repetition of similar situations that led to the twin crimes of 1974.

We have a duty to remember and know the truth about the past. Forgetfulness, contrary as it is to the truth, and even more so the ongoing attempt to falsify history, will only lead us to misfortune as peoples who forget their history are doomed to relive it.

We have no right – as a consequence – to permit fascism to rear its head again, since it is the fascist actions of the Greek Junta, EOKA B and the masked men of Grivas who, through their treachery, handed half of Cyprus to Turkey.

We must never again allow fanaticism, chauvinism and intolerance to prevail, which acted as a Trojan horse for the imposition of the vile US-NATO plans against Cyprus.

(…)

Only when we manage to liberate and reunite our land, will their sacrifice become meaningful and will be fully vindicated.

Because our heroes fought and sacrificed their lives for a free, sovereign and democratic Cyprus. This is the Cyprus we owe to our children and grandchildren.

Long live our Cyprus!

Honour and glory to our heroes!