Speech by the General Secretary of AKEL A.Kyprianou at the burial of the remains of Andreas Aristodimou Georgiou
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 8th November 2020
Almost half a century has passed since that terrible summer of July 1974, the July of betrayal and destruction. Almost half a century later, we are still burying our dead. A fragmented homeland, fragmented souls, fragmented lives and fragmented people in the Committee for Missing Person’s anthropological laboratories.
Almost half a century has passed and yet each time our soul hurts. The pain is still the same when the duty calls us after so many years to bury the flowers of this country again. Twenty-year-old brave lads who went to defend their homeland and lost their youth and sacrificed their life for democracy and the freedom of Cyprus.
One such courageous young man was Andreas Aristodimou Georgiou. Andreas was born in August 1954 in Mosfiloti. He was the third of the four children of Aristodemou and Gregoria. A child of a poor family, Andreas started working at a young age. He stopped working to do his military service in the National Guard, which he completed in April 1974. The conspiracy against Cyprus was already being planned and EOKA B was raging committing numerous criminal acts, chasing and hunting the people of the Left, stealing weapons from military camps and much more. In July 1974 Andreas’ father, worried that his son would become a target of EOKA B because of his political beliefs, advised him to stay with his fiancée in the village of Lythrodontas.
One day in July, Andreas decided to see his family in Mosfiloti. He saw his parents, his older sister, for whom Andreas would always be a child, so she offered him a glass of milk. That was the last time they saw him.
His family looked for him in vain. They searched in vain for an answer. Some told them that he was arrested by coupists and was taken to the village of Nisou by order of the head of EOKA B for interrogation. Others said he had been killed by the coupists, and even pointed out a burial site. He was not found there either.
Eventually the testimonies of his fellow soldiers revealed that one or two days after the Turkish invasion they saw him with his battalion leaving to fight on the frontline. Andreas’ remains were found pierced by bullets in a grave near Ayios Georgios in Kyrenia, along with two other missing persons.
His parents Aristodemos and Gregoria passed away with this pain, for their twenty-year-old brave lad that was lost.
An entire generation of people whose lives were drowned in blood, pain and death that was brought to our country by imperialism, fascism and nationalism is slowly passing away with that misery.
Entire families, dressed in black, tearful relatives receive boxes with the bones of their beloved ones.
All of them are one by one passing away in our refugee settlements and elsewhere and a pain is burning their souls:
When will justice be done?
When will we vindicate the blood that was shed?
When will the wounds heal so that the future can blossom in this country?
We will only manage to do that when we tear down the barbed wires that divide our tormented land.
When we manage to take down the checkpoints.
When our people can finally live united in a reunited homeland.
When we manage to repay our debt to the young men who sacrificed their lives. The debt that does not permit us to accept the nightmare of partition, which unfortunately now more than ever stands before us.
Turkey has always been the obstacle to reaching a solution with its intransigent positions. It always had as a priority and promoted its own interests.
How can we render its goals unfeasible?
How can we force it to either cooperate on the correct basis of the solution or be exposed, paying the corresponding cost?
There aren’t many ways to do that. We will achieve this by being consistent to the agreed basis of the solution. This is what everyone internationally advises us to do. We will achieve this by making use of justice we have on our side, by cooperating with those Turkish Cypriot compatriots who want and are struggling for a solution and reunification.
The constant effort of Turkey and those who have decided that partition is supposedly the best solution, is to cause problems to the efforts to find a solution. They want to convince the people that the Cyprus problem cannot be resolved with the reunification of Cyprus. This places a double responsibility on our side. To find ways to move forward. To constantly take initiatives to prove that we want a solution, that we are working for it and genuinely mean it. Only in this way will we not fall into the trap of the Turkish side that is waiting for us in the corner to tell the international community that the responsibility is ours, thus according to them the international community owes it to Turkey to upgrade the pseudo-state in the occupied areas.
Things are even more difficult today. Ersin Tate has assumed the leadership of the Turkish Cypriot community, a man who expresses Erdogan’s aspirations for a two-state solution. Turkey’s aspirations are being implemented step by step. A characteristic example is the opening not just of the coastal front of Famagusta. Everyone can understand that little by little Turkey will seek to bring things to a point where there won’t be any going back.
Three years have already passed since the collapse at Crans Montana. Our position is difficult. Partition is knocking on the door. Partition means the ‘Turkification’ of our country. The government ruling forces must realize this before it is too late and take initiatives to make it very clear that the Greek Cypriot side is the one that wants a solution, based on the agreed framework; that it is ready to work sincerely in this direction without any regressions and contradictions.
We and all those who are struggling for peace in Cyprus insist and will continue to insist on the solution of the Cyprus problem.
A bi-zonal, bi-communal federal solution, based on the United Nations Resolutions and the agreed framework.
A solution that will reunite our homeland and people, our institutions and economy.
A solution that will free our country from the barbed wires of division, checkpoints and foreign armies.
A solution that will pave the way for the coexistence of our people in a united State – the continuation of the Republic of Cyprus, with a single sovereignty, a single citizenship and a single international personality, without guarantees and intervention rights and with political equality as provided for by the UN resolutions.
The future of Cyprus cannot be partition.
We refuse to give up half of our homeland to Turkey.
We refuse to give in and surrender half of our homeland and the future of this country.
We want a reunited, peaceful Cyprus, a Cyprus that belongs to its people. This is not only what our children and the future demands from us. This is also what the sacrifice of all these young men who rushed to defend this country unarmed and betrayed demand. This is what the blood that was shed demands which watered the mountain range of Pentadaktylos, the plains of Mesaoria, Kyrenia, and every bit of our country that was betrayed from the inside and outside. This is what the remains of our martyrs that are still buried in the ruins and waiting for vindication are demanding.
Only in this way will the sacrifice of Andreas, the sacrifice of all those courageous lads, will not have been in vain.
Only in this way will the pain of all those left behind be alleviated.
Only in this way will we honor the memory of those who sacrificed their lives, those who were lost for Cyprus.
We will continue to struggle until liberation and reunification of Cyprus for their sacrifice and for our Cyprus.
May the memory of Andrea live on forever!
We will struggle so that your sacrifice will not have been in vain.
