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- Ελληνικά
It is with joy, but above all with immense respect, that I am with you today to commemorate the memory of Saint Spyridon, our Saint of Assia, and at the same time to send a strong message on the occasion of International Human Rights Day, which is celebrated on December 10. Human Rights which in Cyprus have been violated for 49 consecutive years, every day, for 18,029 days.
The feast of Saint Spyridon is important for the people of Assisi. He is the Saint of Assia, the shepherd who endured a series of hardships and who managed to win over his fellow villagers as a simple and loving man. He is the shepherd who managed to make it to the first Ecumenical Council and was honoured as a miraculous Saint of Orthodoxy, whose memory we commemorate tomorrow.
If you ask any Cypriot what he knows about Assia, he will receive three possible answers.
If you ask any Cypriot what he knows about Assia, he will receive three possible answers. One will be that it is the village of origin of Saint Spyridon, the second that it is the village of Michael Kassialos, the great Cypriot painter, and the third that it was the village that was asked to pay a heavy price in the black summer of 1974.
Forty-nine years later we can speak in numbers. Assia experienced nightmarish moments, experienced in the worst way the brutality and merciless hatred of the occupiers and this is reflected in the number of executions, murders recorded in those days and the number of missing persons.
Assyrians from 11 years old like George Englezou, to 84 years old like Maritsa Panagi and 86 years old like Yannis Hadjigavriel, were added to the list of the missing. Seven Assyrians fell during the fighting in various areas, defending the freedom and territorial integrity of our homeland, with their names inscribed in the pantheon of heroes of the bloody Cypriot history. Twelve more Assyrians lost their lives defending their village, while 88 of Assia origin or residence went missing. The remains of 67 of them have been found with all the evidence pointing to their brutal murder, while the fate of the remaining 21 is still unknown almost half a century after the black summer of 1974.
Most typical cases are the large group of male Assyrians who, together with residents of the surrounding villages, 70 in total, were snatched from the houses they were in, piled into buses and taken first to Pavlidis Garage and then to the Ornithi area of Aphania, where they were murdered. They were then thrown by the Turkish invaders into wells in the area where their very small bones were found.
But the barbarian invaders had also committed a second crime against them. They had already proceeded to exhume their main bones by transferring them to a secondary burial site, with the result that they were then sought to be buried with proper honours and their souls laid to rest. It should be noted that for two more of them not even a single small bone has been identified. It calls for the war crimes that continued until the 1990s to be finally condemned.
The case of the two families, who were gathered in a house in Assia and the Turkish invaders, arriving outside, started firing furiously at the doors of the house, wounding a 15-year-old boy in the chest, who breathed his last on the spot.
They then entered the house, grabbed the others and drove them out of the village where they murdered them. All of them, women and children and the elderly also watered with their blood the sacred soil of this borderland of Hellenism and this grave was located, but the repeated crime of the Turkish army of interfering with the graves in which they buried their murdered innocent victims and moving their bones was established.
It is our duty to continue our efforts to determine the fate of our last missing person. And our commitment to those who have found refuge is that we will not forget and will continue the struggle for their return to our occupied lands.
The return can be achieved through the efforts of the President of the Republic to resume talks leading to a just and viable solution to the Cyprus problem. The finding of our missing persons can be made possible through the tireless efforts of the State to collect new information in order to determine the fate and truth of our missing persons.
The solution of the Cyprus problem will also be the beginning of the correction of the unacceptable situation that currently prevails in our country with regard to the violation of human rights. Cyprus is one of those parts of the world where human rights violations are systematically and continuously recorded.
Proof of this are the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, which in many cases has ruled that, through Turkey's responsibility, the acquis of the European Convention on Human Rights is being violated and infringed through the occupation, through colonisation and through the concealment of information about our missing persons.
On the occasion of International Human Rights Day, we have an obligation to recall the crimes and the ongoing violation of fundamental articles of the Convention on Human Rights, demanding that the occupation regime comply with the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. As you will know, the relic of Saint Spyridon is in Corfu. There is a procession there four times a year. On Palm Sunday, when in 1630 the island of Corfu was miraculously saved from the plague by the miracle of the Saint, and on Holy Saturday, because of the island's salvation from a terrible famine in 1553, the litany of 11 August in memory of the miraculous rescue of the island from the Agarene Turks in 1716 and the litany on the first Sunday of November in memory of the gratitude of the miraculous rescue of Corfu from the second plague epidemic in 1673.
Our wish is that a fifth litany will soon be established for the liberation of our occupied territories. A fifth litany to commemorate the reunification of our island and the return of all refugees to their ancestral homes. The return of the Assyrians to their village to freely worship at the church of Agios Spyridon, fulfilling at the same time an unfulfilled promise to our great painter Michael Kassialos, who one of his last wishes was to be buried there, in the precinct of the church of Agios Spyridon, which he himself with effort and toil built, crafted and first opened shortly before the barbarian conquerors invaded our land.
(RM/EAθ/ΘΘ)
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