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- Ελληνικά
We are here today at the Holy Church of Apostle Andrew, in the heroic community of Ebba, humble pilgrims, to commemorate and honour those who set aside the small for the great, those who chose eternity over submission.
Overwhelmed by intense feelings of emotion and pride, we pay tribute and commemorate the fallen heroes and the missing of the community. With immense respect and awe, we feel history, a history that fills us with pride, but more importantly, it arms us with an enormous responsibility, that of the heavy national heritage that we carry.
Today we look back to the past, to draw lessons, to reflect, to bring back to our memories the struggles of the multifaceted history of our martyred homeland. We turn back the clock to all the tragic moments experienced by our homeland and our people, which forged this nation, to the historical events that shaped subsequent developments and determined our present and future.
To the call of history to defend our homeland and our nation, the response of our people has always been immediate, spontaneous and enthusiastic.
To the call of history to defend our homeland and our nation, the response of our people has always been immediate, spontaneous and enthusiastic. The absolute devotion to the ideals of freedom and national dignity were always deeply engraved in the heroic souls of the Cypriots.
Identical with the struggles of our homeland, from World War II, the epic of '55-'59, the bloody Christmas of '63, the black days of the invasion, the Empaths present.
As present was Charalambos Papatheocharous, son of the village priest, when in 1940 he volunteered for the army and participated in World War II on the Greek front. He was last seen in Kalamata when the German front was broken. He was never to return to his village.
The universal human ideals that Charalambos defended, fighting fascism, were the same ideals that inspired and energized the young people of our homeland, then under British occupation. The unquenchable desire to shake off the English yoke and for the Union flared up until the boat of freedom docked on our fateful island. In golden letters are recorded the most glorious pages of our modern history. A handful of rebels standing up to an entire empire. You see, the desire for freedom, no chain of enslavement can hold it back.
And how can a place never be free, when young men like George Christoforou from Emba, respond to the revolutionary call? The son of a World War II warrior, George grew up early on with the seeds of our Greek-Christian tradition. The outbreak of the EOKA Struggle finds him following the paths of freedom and joining the secret army of the Organization.
Pure, ideological and eloquent, the Greek-souled George surrenders his indestructible spirit to the altar of Freedom on November 20, 1958.
Pure, ideological and eloquent, the Greek-souled George surrenders his indestructible spirit to the altar of Freedom on November 20, 1958. His arrest, the horrible torture he endured and the illusion of his torturers that he would reveal to them the place where he had hidden the Organization's weapons
The epic of '55-'59 is victorious and our country gains its independence, an independence - unfortunately - vulnerable to ambitions and plans of destabilization.
Unfortunately, the clouds are not long in coming. After the "bloody Christmas" of '63, Nicosia finds itself separated from the "green line". Conflicts are spreading.
The aggravation and provocations of the Turkish insurgents are a daily phenomenon. The wider province of Paphos is not only no exception, but will be at the centre of one of the most tragic chapters of the conflict.
The victim of Turkish intolerance is fifty-year-old Neophytos Metaxas, who opens with his sacrifice the chorus of Eba's fallen. Metaxas is cowardly murdered on New Year's Day '64, and a few days later, the community will be dressed in black again, burying two more of its chosen children. The EOKA fighters, Napoleon Nikiforou and Nikolaos Ellinas,[/B] who, while performing guard duties in Paphos, will meet a tragic death at the hands of Turkish insurgents.
The tension, instead of subsiding, unfortunately escalates. In March '64, the lives of the inhabitants of Paphos will be indelibly marked. On the eve of the Victory Day, the day when the municipal market in Ktima was overrun by thousands of people, the Turks indiscriminately opened fire on the crowd. The blind strike was followed by scenes of panic and madness.
The blood of the dead overflowed with anger and the popular mobilisation led on 9 March to a counter-attack against the Turkish prisons, which, despite the losses, was successful. The veil of mourning, however, once again covers the communities of Paphos, with Eba burying the new victims of Turkish brutality. Ariadne Nikolaou[/B], 50, and Chrystalla Christofi[/B], just 32, die unexpectedly and are buried in the aftermath of the tragic events. Under the weight of the challenges and the danger to the Greek Cypriot inhabitants of the surrounding villages, the National Guard, assisted by a number of volunteers, rushed to the area. Students, farmers and craftsmen, everyday people, form the village platoon and, leaving their families behind, volunteer for the new national call. They oppose the Turkish imposition with courage and determination. With proverbial self-denial, they succeeded in consolidating the presence of the friendly forces in the heights northwest of the Kokkin enclave.
In the first ten days of August, the fighting intensified and Turkish warplanes found the opportunity to wreak havoc. With incendiary napalm bombs, they ruthlessly bombard the entire area, not excluding dozens of civilian targets, such as the Pachyammou Hospital. In those unequal battles, sixteen-year-old George Nearchou and eighteen-year-old Euripides Charalambous give the unadulterated blood of their youth, libations on the altar of the immense values of freedom and justice.
The path of honour and debt to the homeland will be followed by their twenty-year-old compatriot Andreas Alexiou, whom we also commemorate today. Andreas, while on duty, would lose his life in 1968 on the road from Chrysopateritsa to Pyrgos Tylliria.
In the following years, internal rivalry would dramatically affect our country. The foolish coup of July 15th finds Andreas Makarios spontaneously and voluntarily boarding one of the buses from Paphos to Limassol in order to defend the Republic. On the road near Kolossi, a coup group ambushes them and the 17-year-old youth is fatally wounded. From the Limassol Hospital, to the summary burials at the Agios Nikolaos Cemetery and the drama of the family, who for four decades were not allowed to know exactly where their deceased Andreas was buried. The soul of Andreas Makarios will be finally laid to rest when his remains are identified and buried with the requisite honours, 41 long years later, in this holy church.
In the balance of the fratricidal heartbreak, the manifestation of the Turkish invasion is simply an inevitable conclusion. The "ten thousand bees sent to us by Onesilos" we, unfortunately, ignored.
The youth of Cyprus will again be led to arms. They will once again be called upon to defend what we have staked, dizzy with the intoxication of discord. So today we honour Christodoulos Polydorou who stood up, defending the territorial integrity of our homeland, against the battles of the first phase of the invasion. Wearing the uniform with the glorious national emblem, he will fall heroically on July 21, 1974 in Tziaos. Since then, his name has been inscribed in the long list of martyrs of Cypriot freedom.
We bow today to the drama of the families of Andreas Touloupou and Chrysanthos Evrypidou. We pray for the speedy clarification of the fate of our missing brothers, who, along with hundreds of other compatriots, continue to make up the list of anger and Turkish callousness.
The Cyprus we live in today is not the homeland envisioned by the heroes we commemorate. It is not the one for which they fought and sacrificed.
The commemoration of our glorious heroes is a reminder to intensify our efforts with determination. 50 years later, our country remains divided, 50 years since the illegal Turkish invasion, 50 years of occupation and division of Cyprus, 50 years of refugees, missing and trapped, 50 years of blatant violation of human rights. 50 years is a lot, dangerously a lot.
As the President of the Republic Mr. Nicos Christodoulides has declared, our main concern is to work with all our forces to achieve a solution for an independent and truly sovereign state, free of any anachronistic guarantees and the presence of occupying troops. We are working for the end of the occupation, the reunification of our homeland through the achievement of a peaceful solution to the Cyprus problem.
As a Government, we assure you that our highest goal is none other than the reunification of Cyprus. We remain firmly committed to a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem on the basis of the relevant United Nations resolutions, with one sovereignty, one citizenship, one international personality, always in accordance with the relevant United Nations resolutions, the European acquis and of course the principles and values on which the European Union is founded.
With reverence and undiminished commitment we will continue to devote every bit of our energies to building a Cyprus that will be a symbol of peace, stability and progress in the region. A modern, European model country that safeguards the human rights of all its inhabitants, that guarantees hope and is based on mutual respect and solidarity, ready to chart its own unique course on the map of world history.
The heavy heritage we honour today dictates our duty.
So let us look to the future, feeling the glorious pages of our history. To learn lessons, to recall memories, to understand the importance of our mission.
Every man, every people, becomes worthy of his historical mission as his awareness of his history deepens. The greatness of a nation's civilization is always proportional to the purity and depth of its historical memory. It is our duty, therefore, to make this historical memory an experience, the need for history to meet the historicity of need, the imperative for unity to be transformed into redemption.
For it is true that we have a historical debt to our glorious ancestors, but we also have a perhaps greater debt to our children to throw off the Turkish yoke from our divided homeland.
A divided, occupied homeland cannot accommodate the future, hope and perspective we envision for the generations that will succeed us. We must translate the sacrifices of our heroes into our very "being". For if this selective reference to our heroes and their sacrifices is limited to rhetorical proclamations and verbal grandstanding, then we will be unworthy of our own history.
With honesty and sobriety, let us reflect on our debt to these glorious heroes and to future generations.
After all, as the poet says:
We owe a debt to those who have come and gone,
will come and go.
Judges will judge us
the unborn, the dead."
We bow reverently to the struggles of our heroic dead who bravely fought for the faith in ideals."
We bow reverently to the struggles of our heroic dead who bravely fought for the faith in ideals. Their sacrifices and their struggles their beacon and compass.
Honor and glory to all the fighters of Ebba who marked the primacy, who founded our struggles.
Honour to the land of Emba that gave birth, nurtured and sewed with the seeds of Hellenism and Christianity, these worthy children.
Immortal heroes of Emba,
We honour and bow to your great sacrifice. Your memory will be eternal, as our struggle will be unceasing until the final vindication, the justification of your sacrifice.
Eternal and ageless may be the luminous memory of our heroes.
(PM/EATH)
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs PIO
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or PIO
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