9 October 2005

October 1, the date marking the founding of the Cypriot state, has this year once again been dominated by the traditional climate of political slogans and distortion of historical truth.

Not a single attempt was made at serious analysis of the facts that have marked the course of this state to the present day. Naturally, no one would expect such an effort from our politicians, who remain captive to the myths peddled to this strange nation of ours for half a century now.

Besides, some of them – such as President Tassos Papadopoulos and Vassos Lyssarides – are among the protagonists of those terrible events through which the Republic, as an independent and whole state, was essentially put to death just three years after its birth.

On October 2, Phileleftheros hosted articles by all party leaders dedicated to the anniversary. They were all monuments to hypocrisy. Once again, Christofias was the worst of all, attributing the dismantling of the state in 1960 to "chauvinists on both sides", whom of course he did not name.

But history is there, the facts are well known, and no one – not even Christofias – can violate historic truth so shamelessly. I hope that AKEL’s rank-and-file and supporters realise why the leader of their party does not dare speak plainly. He does not dare, because he knows that some of the people implicated are the same people to whom, 40 years later, Christofias and his entourage handed down power over this state – or what’s left of it.

The chauvinists of 1963 were not some shadowy or anonymous thugs, nor were they a bunch of lunatics who escaped from the Athalassa psychiatric ward. They had names and addresses. And to employ a term coined by Papadopoulos, there is proof and a paper trail documenting who these people were.

Those who dissolved the state back then were Makarios, Yiorkadjis, Papadopoulos, Clerides, Lyssarides, Kyprianou et. al. (Whenever I mention Clerides in this respect, I feel it appropriate to add that he was the only one who later repented of his actions and strived to re-unite this torn-up state).

The chauvinists, then, had names, as did the paramilitary organisation they founded to achieve their aims. It was called "Akritas", a name which AKEL’s honest supporters will never hear Christofias utter. This was the organisation that provoked the bloody clashes with Turkish Cypriots in Christmas 1963, having previously – as revealed today by shocking testimony – committed a series of heinous crimes so as to foment hatred between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

They stooped so low as to bomb statues of EOKA heroes and burn Greek schools to achieve this unholy goal (see Makarios Dhroushiotis’ book, the first partition of Cyprus 1963-64, page 144). And perhaps because "Akritas" was not enough to do the job, Makarios saw to it to equip Lyssarides and Sampson with guns so they too could set up their own paramilitary groups.

But, dear readers, all this, which is what October 1 was really about, you did not hear from the lips of Christofias, nor from Papadopoulos – the second-in-command in "Akritas" – in his address to the nation. Nor will you hear it from any section of the media.

The media are part of the despicable conspiracy of silence, because they have common interests with the instigators of those events. Twenty-five years ago, Hadjicostis, the owner of the Dias group, wrote in Simerini denouncing the protagonists of the bloody clashes of 1963, saying that these people were "fit to rot in hell for eternity".