Speech by the General Secretary of the C.C. of AKEL A.Kyprianou to the meeting organized by the progressive women’s movement of POGO on International Women’s Day

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 8 March 2018, Nicosia

“Sexual exploitation of women in Syria by volunteers who offered help in exchange for food and other goods.”

“Oxfam executives had hired prostitutes, possibly adolescents as well, with NGO money during their mission in Haiti in 2010.”

“It’s an order. Don’t kill them, shoot them in the vagina, because without it they are useless,” said the President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duarte as to what he ordered his soldiers to do to the women guerrillas of the New People’s Army (NPA). He recently declared willing to offer “42 virgins” as a gift to anyone visiting the Philippines for tourism.

These are extracts from some recent press reports. If someone wanted to hide behind one’s finger he/she would rush to declare that these actions are taking place in war zones, or in some underdeveloped countries, but not in the modern, “western” world. But unfortunately this isn’t the case.

From the heart of the supposed “European values”, that is the European Court of Justice, a recent ruling specified that dismissals of pregnant women are permitted within the framework of group redundancies. In France, there was outrage recently stemming from newspaper reports that were urging female students to prefer a relationship with a “wealthy” man of some age, instead of agreeing to a bank loan to pay off their studies. “These men “support” the girls by offering generous gifts or money. In return, the girl must understand she must be pleasant, beautiful (…) she must always be flexible and ensure she is available,” says the relevant web site. In London, according to a BBC survey, more and more people are asking for “sex instead of rent” ads in run-down areas of London. In Britain, women are paid 18% less than men, which makes rent much more expensive for them, because households headed by women spend a much higher proportion of their income on housing.

This is a sample of the situation for women in the world of 2018.

In the Cyprus of 2018, are things any different?

In Cyprus, the pay gap stands at 14.8%. The most common job for women is “employee in the services sector” and “salesperson”. 30% of women are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. More than 1 in 6 women have an income below the relative poverty line. Around 1 in 10 women live in a household with a very low labour intensity index and 15% suffer from severe material deprivation.

According to statistics released by the Association for the Prevention and Combating of Violence in the Family, 89% of the victims in cases it dealt with were women, while 2% of the victims were women who were pregnant.

In Cyprus the headlines we read in many cases have identical stories. “A victim of human trafficking, a 34-year-old mother of three children, was brought to Cyprus from the occupied areas and they married her off with a 23-year-old from Bangladesh.” “You drink a drink, you pay ten euros and when you give a hundred euros, you get a girl and you leave. This was happening in the cabarets, now it’s going on in the nightclubs.” “I had to start work at 7am and finish at 11pm. I’m not even entitled to rest. I had to cook my own food, which was simply rice and vegetables. They didn’t offer me any meat. All the family I worked for behaved towards me as if I was a slave and warned me many times that I mustn’t touch their food. I had to drink water from the bathroom! They behaved to me as if I was a dog, both madam and her son.”

In the Cyprus of 2018, it still isn’t clear that a woman can and must be free to decide about her body. In contrast to the debate on the modernization of the law on abortion, the Church is intervening, which has every right to express, but not in the House of Representatives.

In Cyprus, 36% of women in a recent survey responded that they had suffered sexual harassment at work. Unfortunately, however, the perceptions and approach that politicians seem to have on the subject will anything but help combat the problem.

It is incomprehensible for the President of the Republic to claim that “we should not go to other extremes where a friendly, good-intentioned gesture to someone of the other sex will be incriminated. We shouldn’t confuse, for example, compassion with harassment” – as if a woman isn’t capable of understanding when the first and second occurs.

Its also incomprehensible for political figures to declare that “harassment results from insistence rather than the warning to stop” and that “no one would want to get to the point where no man will flirt any woman out of fear. How will a man approach a woman if he’ll be afraid to tell her that it’s nice to touch her hand?” Such perceptions are both erroneous and outdated and most convenient for those who do harass women.

It is regrettable that after so many decades on the day when women took to the streets of New York, outraged by the oppression and hardships, we are still discussing on this day things that should be self-evident and timely. The era of the crisis causes setbacks recalling bygone times. For all these reasons, the role of the women’s movement is extremely important today and even more so today’s International Day for all women.

Today we honor those pioneering women who lit the flame in 1857 in New York. But we also honor the women of our times. The woman who works 12 and 16 hours a day for a meagre salary. The woman who chose or happened to raise her children and is struggling to make ends meet. The woman found dead after drowning in the Mediterranean embracing her child, searching for a better life. The woman who has seen war kill everything, even hope. The woman victim of the human trafficking merchants.

Women were and are twice the victim of the capitalist system. They suffer double exploitation because of their gender, but also class position. It was this conclusion that led women to join the workers movement to struggle for the fulfillment of their goals and assertions.

We also honor and pay homage to the great figures of the international women’s movement, such as Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg.

We honor the pioneering Cypriot women who charted the way forward. Katina Nicolaou, Fofo Vassiliou, Lefki Marathovouniotou, Artemisia Hambi Nikola and many others. We honor the thousands of women in the Cypriot women’s movement who have fought and achieved great gains for women.

The most important achievement of the organized women’s movement of the Left, POGO, is that it has managed to bring Cypriot women to the forefront of political and socio-economic struggles, combining the struggles for equality and parity with the working people’s overall struggle for social justice. It struggled in practice against backward conservative attitudes on the position of women in society and opened up the avenues of assertion and emancipation. It made its mark on all the great achievements of our people and women in particular. It has contributed, together with AKEL and the wider People’s Movement of the Left, to the achievement of popular gains and rights.

The abolition of dowry, the revision of family law, the adoption of the Equality and Equality Act, equal access to work, better legislation on maternity protection, increased maternity and parental leave, and the prevention of violence against the family, all bear the indelible stamp of POGO.

What was achieved during the government of Christofias in relation to women’s demands should also be noted.

The protection of maternity and pregnant working women was strengthened. Legislation on parental leave was improved. Childcare and elderly care infrastructures and services were funded and the free transfer of children to school was established. Specific projects were implemented to tackle female unemployment and address gender inequality. The minimum wage in jobs with high female employment percentages rose. A comprehensive policy to provide support for People with Disabilities. Equality was applied. The mutual respect of sexes became a priority of the Education reform that was initiated. The Demographic and Family Policy Authority was established. The first National Strategy Plan was formulated to balance work, family and personal life. The first National Strategy Plan to Combat Violence in the Family was elaborated. Many of these achievements were subsequently undermined by the Anastasiades Governance, unfortunately causing multiple consequences for women, but also for society in general.

AKEL never stops fighting for parity and the improvement of the position of women. That is why we are working to promote a series of demands on women’s issues, such as the preparation of unified comprehensive legislation on violence against women, covering violence in the family and all forms of violence at work and in society, together with a single archive for statistical data on all forms of violence committed against women.

At the same time, the institutional and legislative safeguarding of the implementation of collective agreements and the possibility of extending them across the whole of the economic sector, and the legislative safeguarding of minimum obligatory terms of employment will bring about improvements in working conditions and the quality of the workforce of thousands of women.

The Cyprus problem and the women’s movement

If anyone reviews the struggles of the women’s movement in Cyprus, they will be taken aback by the militancy and determination of the women of Cyprus in their struggles against imperialism and fascism, for the liberation and reunification of our country.

There isn’t a single mobilization for rapprochement and peace, against fascism and war which the women’s movement doesn’t participate in. The women of Cyprus have been at the forefront of the anti-occupation struggle for more than four decades. Particularly in this critical juncture of the Cyprus problem, we all need to strengthen our voice, to become the force of persistence and consistency to the goal of the solution of the Cyprus problem.

The Cyprus problem

Mr. Anastasiades’ arguments after the deadlock in Crans Montana, concerning what actually happened with the crisis in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) doesn’t permit us to hope that the talks will resume soon – unless he changes his policy.

As AKEL, we express our concern and anxiety because it is now beyond any doubt that the President disagrees with the UN Secretary-General’s framework for the resumption of the negotiations. Mr. Guterres was quite clear. He called on the two leaders to clarify that they have the same goal, agree on the procedure to be pursued and to convince him of their political will to move forward. Unfortunately, Mr. Anastasiades is looking in other directions, burying yet another framework. It is a fact that if the NAVTEX isn’t canceled and if the Turkish challenges aren’t terminated there can be no developments. But how prepared are we for the next steps?

We will not tire of pointing out that life itself has proved that when Mr. Anastasiades regresses, as was the case in 2013 up to the beginning of 2014, he gives Turkey the opportunity and arguments to act aggressive and provocative, despite Turkey being in the wrong.

We will not tire of reiterating that, contrary to what it wants to say, Turkey tried to intervene in our energy plans in 2011 as well. The policy pursued by D. Christofias didn’t give Turkey room to maneuver. In contrast to today’s situation where Mr. Anastasiades with his contradictions and regressions, has not only allowed Turkey to be extremely provocative and aggressive, but has also left us without substantial support from the international community.

We must point out to Mr. Anastasiades and the governing DISY party that former Foreign Minister Mr.Kasoulides himself (in the previous Anastasiades administration) just recently refuted each one of their arguments that we are supposedly cultivating illusions and are exaggerating in our criticism. It was Mr. Kasoulides himself who said that the government had been receiving warnings about developments, but that it had ignored them. The Anastasiades government was unfortunately too busy with its campaign making big and empty slogans and talk about its “multidimensional foreign policy” and “protecting the interests of the Republic of Cyprus in its entirety”.

They were in fact systematically and deliberately deceiving the people to serve petty-political and electoral considerations. They did the same in 1993 with the Ghali Set of Ideas, in 1998 with the S300 missiles fiasco, in 2013, and during the recent Presidential elections just last month.

They must at long last draw the correct conclusions from what has been done and pursue a correct and consistent political line of defending the interests of Cyprus and of the Cypriot people as a whole. The de-escalation of the tension caused by Turkey as a result of its pirate behaviour must be the top priority, as well as the resumption of the negotiations on the Cyprus problem, as requested by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The solution of the Cyprus problem, given the convergences achieved by Christofias-Talat on the hydrocarbons, is the most effective way to exploit our country’s natural wealth for the benefit of our people. These convergences leave very little for a further regulation with regard to natural gas. According to these convergences, all the maritime zones without exception are defined as competences of the federation, not of the federal units. The delimitation with neighboring states and the settlement of a dispute has also been defined as a federal competency, all in accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is referred to three times in the text of the relevant convergence. Furthermore, it was also agreed that this would be included in the list of the Treaties of the Federal Republic of Cyprus.

In addition, it was agreed that the natural resources would also be under federal competency, while on the chapter regarding the economy a convergence had been agreed on the allocation of federal revenues, which will of course include the revenues from natural gas. All this mustn’t be lost as these convergences represent a solid foundation for hydrocarbons in the event of a solution. This is what Mr. Anastasiades was forced to put forward in 2014, when the policy he had previously been pursuing brought the Turkish vessel “Barbaros” roaming to our southern coasts. This is also what he said lately as regards the crisis in the EEZ.

All these developments confirm our positions and perseverance in calling on Mr. Anastasiades to support the efforts for the solution based on the agreed framework and the convergences that have been achieved.

For its part, the Turkish Cypriot leadership has to rise to the occasion and insist on what has been agreed, provided its aim is the solution of the Cyprus problem and not the indirect upgrading of the illegal pseudo-state. The indirect threats issued, but also the statements insisting on putting Turkey on the scene of developments do not serve the well-intentioned interests of neither the Greek Cypriots, nor the Turkish Cypriots. On the contrary, they only serve Turkish imperialism and local nationalism on both sides of the barbed wire of division.

After the Presidential Elections, we have pointed out that as the powerful force of opposition we will not hold back in our criticism of anyone. Our criticism will be responsible and objective, but severe. We know that a large section of Cypriot society shares common goals, common expectations and visions with us. For the reunification of the country, for the modernization and democratization of the state and society. We want to open our arms and wage the struggles of Cyprus with them. We need the women’s movement at the forefront of these struggles. As much strength women have to give life to the world, they have the same much strength when organized in the struggle to change life and the world.

A lot of work, many and difficult battles await us for the victory of humanity, the victory of the future.

Let’s not waste a single day!

All together in the struggle for the future that we deserve!