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- Русский
Holy Church of St. George, Aglantzia, Sunday, July 2, 2023
It is with feelings of national pride, It is with feelings of national pride, compelling debt and historical responsibility that we have gathered today at the Holy Church of St. George in Aglantzia to pay our due tribute to the fallen and missing residents of Aglantzia during the Turkish invasion of 1974. We are all here to pay tribute to all those who, remaining faithful to the timeless values of freedom and justice, have shown unique and exemplary self-denial in defence of our native land, history, struggles, principles and ideals of our country.
Guided by our national and religious duty, we are gathered here today to reflect on the importance of the self-denial and the overall course of our compatriots from Aglantzia and to learn lessons from their struggle and sacrifice.
I consider it an honour and at the same time an obligation to refer to each of them individually.
Present at the call of the homeland, were. When he returned to Cyprus in 1971, he worked as a teacher and in 1973, he resided in Aglantzia. On July 20, 1974 he joined the 391st Infantry Battalion in Athiana. He was killed in action on August 14, 1974, by a Turkish mortar shell.
- Lieutenant General Georgios Yagou joined the 361 Infantry Battalion in Synchari. During the battle of Dikomo he was seriously wounded and transferred to the Nicosia General Hospital where he died on 21 July 1974.
- Sergeant Andreas Kyprianou on 20 July joined the 306 Infantry Battalion at Neo Horio Kythrea as a reserve soldier. His unit was transferred the same day to Kyrenia to repel the Turkish invasion. His traces were lost and until 2010 he was on the long list of missing persons.
- Phoebus Christofi was under the command of the 256 Infantry Battalion during the invasion. In fierce battles in the villages of Lapithos and Karava, his traces were lost and 35 years later, his remains were found in a mass grave.
- The infantry soldier Christos Triantafyllidis, at the call of his country, left his pregnant wife behind and during the second phase of the invasion, he was killed by sniper bullets.
- Marios Hadjisavas, along with several of his fellow soldiers, wandered for days in the Pentadaktylos, until Turkish soldiers spotted them and handed them over to Turkish Cypriots in the village of Tziaos. In 2008, his remains were found in a mass grave in the Turkish Cypriot village of Kornokipos.
- Konstantinos Plidis during the Turkish invasion died fighting in his outpost on 15 August 1974.
- Marios Petsas was mortally wounded during the Turkish invasion by bombing.
The then small Aglantzia of 5000 inhabitants paid a heavy price for the brutal Turkish invasion. The list of our missing compatriots includes eight more of our compatriots from Aglantzia.
- Sergeant Petros Petrou whose traces were lost on 22 July 1974.
- Sergeant Haralambos Hambou was last seen in Kyrenia and since then his fate has been unknown.
- Charalambos Koumbaridis last contacted his wife on 23 July 1974 and since then there is no information about his fate.
- Savvas Simeou joined the 211th Infantry Battalion and has since been included in the long list of the missing.
- Kostas Charalambous, Alexandros Olympiou, commando Michalakis Charalambous, Dimitris Theodosiou, Stavros Roussounidis. There are so many.
All of us, reverent pilgrims, have gathered here today to light the candle of our souls from the flame of the heroism of those commemorated. To realize the magnitude of our debt, the extent and depth of our responsibility. In these difficult times, what the Cypriot people expect from all of us is prudence, unanimity and determination. Only in this way can we manage to meet the multi-layered challenges of the times and fight, doing everything possible to achieve the liberation of our country, its freedom from Turkish occupation and the reunification of our land.
Undoubtedly, in this difficult struggle we need above all to have unity and unity. In order to achieve an end to the occupation and the reunification of our country without occupying troops and dividing lines, to create conditions for peace and to create the conditions for a promising future, we must be united as never before. We must all keep the level of dialogue high, without name-calling and aphorisms.
Guided by the struggles of the past and the lessons learned from them, we declare unequivocally that we do not accept occupation. Our concern and concern is transformed into a driving force that leads us to a clear will to continue the effort to end the occupation and reunify our country.
The present unacceptable state of affairs does not allow any citizen of this country to enjoy the rights, freedoms and level of prosperity that all other citizens in the European Union consider indisputable and acquired. On the contrary, the current unacceptable status quo is, among other things, a permanent source of disorder and insecurity and should in no way be a source of complacency. For us, there is no other option and no other way but to end the occupation, reunite our country and finally bring peace to our land. Our goal and aspiration is, through a meaningful dialogue that we wish to resume from where it was interrupted in the summer of 2017, to hand over to future generations a homeland without occupation troops, without foreign guarantees, reunited, modern and European.
And it is in this very context that the prominent and active involvement of the EU, both in breaking the deadlock and in the resolution of the Cyprus problem, is imperative, and it is in this direction that we have been working from the first day of assuming the governance of the country, and we see with cautious optimism that the initiative we have undertaken is internationally recognized and that efforts have begun to implement it.
We continue the effort to end the current unacceptable state of affairs and to reunite our country, with the same tenacity, learning from our history. But always within the framework of realism and determination. This will be the best memorial offering we can make.
May their memory be eternal.
(PM/AF)
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