Speech by the General Secretary of AKEL S. Stefanou at the Event to honor the 16th June 1943 decision by AKEL

 

15 June 2023

“Goodbye my friends. There is no other wreath than the wreath of the Homeland and the Working People to cover your head”. This is how the leadership of AKEL at the Pancyprian Conference bid farewell to the volunteers who responded to the call issued by the Party’s historic decision ON 16 June 1943 to voluntarily enlist in the army to defeat the forces of Hitler fascism.

There is indeed no greater honor than the defence of the Homeland, the defence of the people. That is precisely why we have again gathered here for yet another year.

We honor the Cypriots who enlisted in the Second World War fighting against fascism – whether they enlisted at the call of the Party or on their own initiative. They all served the great progressive goal of smashing fascism.

We honor the Cypriots who fell heroically fighting on the battlefields and are buried in numerous cemeteries abroad.

We honor the memory of those who are no longer with us. In the person of their loved ones who are here tonight, we honor the history written by their own beloved ones, we highlight their own contribution to the struggle of the World for Freedom and Democracy.

We also honor those who, despite their advanced age, are with us, with the Victory Medal gleaming on their lapels. With their faces justly shining with pride, because at the critical hour they did not yield and rushed to fulfill the task of saving humanity from the teeth of the fascist beast.

Cyprus’ contribution to the anti-fascist struggle is disproportionately great in relation to its small size. So great that it deserves recognition and respect from all. We feel proud of the contribution our Cyprus made. Just as we are proud of our Party, AKEL, which made a significant contribution to Cyprus’ anti-fascist contribution with its historic decision of 16 June 1943.

AKEL’s decision is one of the landmarks of the glorious, almost one hundred-year history of our Party. A decision with political significance and implications. A decision that is both internationalist and patriotic. The decision was the natural continuation of the founding of AKEL in 1941 as a party which, according to its founding Act, was “of a purely democratic, anti-fascist and anti-Hitler character”.

When the Central Committee’s decision was taken, AKEL was just two years old. It had neither the organisational structure, nor the mechanism to mobilise the people organizationally. Yet! There was an unprecedented, massive and overwhelming response to its call. There is unquestionably an explanation for this.

The decision of 16 June 1943 was the culmination of a series of political anti-fascist initiatives which AKEL began to undertake immediately after its foundation in 1941. Initiatives with which it cultivated the ground for the creation of a broad anti-fascist popular front. So it was not just talk that AKEL defined itself as a ‘democratic, anti-fascist, anti-Hitler’ party. It was the realisation in practice of what it stood for, promoted, pursued and struggled for.

Just two months after its foundation, AKEL carried out an intense anti-fascist campaign in all the towns and villages of Cyprus, coming into contact with thousands of people. Speaking about the nature of fascism, the dangers to humanity, the need to defend the universal human values of peace and democracy against war, intolerance and racism. As a result of this campaign, AKEL prepared a relevant Memorandum which it delivered to the British colonial Governor. In the Memorandum, AKEL stated its position that Cyprus could contribute to the anti-fascist allied war and asserted that the colonial power create the relevant preconditions for this.

AKEL never received a reply to its Memorandum from the British colonialists.  The fact that it came from the Party of the Cyprus Left, which had entered the political arena with its foundation, was an embarrassment to the colonialists. It was also embarrassed by the fact that AKEL clearly linked the anti-fascist struggle to Cyprus’ day after the end of the war and, in particular, to the granting of the right to self-determination to our people.

In the declaration publicizing the decision of 16 June, AKEL stressed the need to “strengthen the struggle for the liberation of Greece from Hitler’s tyranny, the liberation of the enslaved countries and the securing of the national, political and social future of the Island”.

A special place among the initiatives taken by AKEL during this period was the campaign it had organised under the slogan “A day’s work for the defence of Cyprus”. An initiative of great symbolism, considering that workers who supported their families with a poor living wage were called upon to donate it to the defence of Cyprus. Thousands of workers from all over the country responded to this initiative, helping to build fortifications, roads and other infrastructure.

The decision of the Central Committee of AKEL boosted the numbers of the rank and file and strengthened the people’s anti-fascist mobilisation. Before AKEL’s call, volunteers in most cases did not exceed 100 people per month. Within a few days after the Central Committee’s decision there was a list of 731 people ready! It is also noteworthy that all the members of the Central Committee were willing to sign up, thus leading by example.

AKEL’s decision was unexpectedly fiercely attacked by its political opponents, who in any case have never looked favourably on the emergence of the Party of the Left on the political scene. First and most it was the big party of the Right, the “National Party” that reacted vehemently, claiming that AKEL would erode the army, that the army was putting a snake in its ranks and other incomprehensible claims.

These were of course not the only ones heard. AKEL’s opponents again brought up the slogans about “enemies of the nation”, which they have kept handy in their arsenal ever since: “And God be your witness, we will still call you anti-nationals with no love for the country”, they wrote reacting to the decision of the AKEL Conference.

This was a petty attitude and approach which, however, did not find a substantial response in society, as it was overshadowed by the enthusiastic response of the people to AKEL’s call for registration.

At the Conference, where the decision to enlist was taken, AKEL militants and members took an oath “to the universal human spirit of Freedom and Justice…we will not disgrace the weapons entrusted to us by the Homeland…to the millions of peoples whose blood paves the way to Freedom, we will also offer our own blood generously”.

With this oath the AKEL militants fought on the fronts of the North Caucasus. With this oath, AKEL members fought on the front lines of Africa, the Middle East and Italy.

Dear friends,

Dear veterans of the Great War,

The decision of the AKEL members and militants to enlist was a conscious political act. It had a clear political and ideological motive. The AKEL members organised themselves in the army and organised with them many others too who had not been called up by the Party’s call. They asserted demands for soldiers and their daily life. They organized educational and cultural activities. They turned military service into a great university from which conscious cadres graduated from who later led and actively participated in our people’s anti-colonial struggle.

Even after the War ended with the victory of the peoples against Hitler fascism, AKEL continued to organise the volunteers of the anti-fascist struggle. This time to counter the plans of the British colonialists who did not demobilize the Cypriot volunteers because they planned to enlist them to suppress and fight against the anti-colonial movements in the region.

AKEL organised a mass movement for the demobilization of the volunteers and in the end, after fierce and sometimes bloody struggles, managed to thwart the British colonialist’s plans. No Cypriot soldier turned his weapons against the struggling peoples of our region. This was due to the strong resistance that mobilized the volunteers of the War to prevent them from becoming instruments of British imperialism.

With the end of the War, AKEL used Cyprus’ contribution to the anti-fascist struggle of humanity to promote and advance the just demand of our people for an end to colonialism by giving them the right to self-determination. Britain, despite the assurances and promises it had generously made during the War, refused to grant this right. Another period of struggle began: that of the anti-colonial struggle, a struggle that was to be long and hard and in which AKEL again was at the forefront. This is another chapter of Cypriot history and of the Party, but it is not the subject of this speech.

Dear friends,

The history of humanity has irrefutably proven that the progress and prosperity of the peoples is achieved through struggle. Many times history has proven that what at first sight seems unattainable turns out to be achievable – as long as it is pursued with consistency, continuity, correct strategy, tactics and organization. And, of course, it must be a demand of the times, it must have matured and must move societies.

It is for this reason that peoples must never give up their struggles and efforts to win their freedom and independence, to achieve peace against war, democracy against dictatorship and fascism. To achieve all that opens the way and the perspective for the country, society, the whole world.

The anti-fascist fighters of the Second World War with their example added important pieces to the above historical experience. We must bear this historical experience in mind when great problems and powerful adversaries stand before us and pose a threat to humanity and its future.

It is this experience that we must constantly bear in mind so that we do not submit to misery and fatalism in the modern, contradictory and dangerous world we live in.

Not to surrender to what the ruling circles internationally impose as inevitable, but in reality it is not because it simply does not serve the future of humanity and destroys its perspective.

This is the experience we must draw on in our Cyprus to continue the difficult struggle for freedom from the occupation and de facto partition. We must not back down for a moment and compromise with the occupation, which Turkey is reinforcing by exploiting the longest stalemate ever witnessed on the Cyprus problem.

In order to be worthy of the heroic legacies left to us by the antifascist fighters of World War II, we must continue the struggle by asserting the realisation of every progressive goal that leads to the prosperity of our people and our country’s progress.

Looking to the future, we continue what the Cypriot Left has been doing throughout its entire historical journey!

Honor and glory to the antifascist volunteers of our Cyprus in World War II!