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We are here today, on the honoured soil of the village of Avgoros, to glorify and commemorate our valiant heroes and heroines, who with their blood contributed to the liberation of Cyprus from the mighty empire, to the throwing off of the English yoke and to the fulfillment of our people's age-old desire for self-determination.
In the national liberation struggle of 55-59, the protagonists were people from all social strata, students, peasants, children, teenagers and elderly people, each of whom offered selflessly to the sacred cause of the struggle.
The means available to the Cypriots were meagre, since the advent of the British Empire on the island did not allow the people to get back on their feet.
The long years of tyranny, oppression and contempt by the colonialists caused the Cypriot people to rise up, an uprising that was transmuted and written in the pages of modern Cypriot history as the most heroic resistance of our people.
The courageous spirit of the Cypriots for self-determination was unwavering.
The courageous spirit of the Cypriots for self-determination was unwavering. With all the means at their disposal they threw themselves into battle and faced the mighty English yoke with unparalleled manliness.
With full consciousness and a high sense of devotion to their homeland and the sacred cause of the struggle, our heroes built temples of freedom in every corner of our island with their self-sacrifice.
The village of Avgoros is also a temple of freedom. The battles fought by your compatriots are proof of the great heroism of the national liberation struggle of Cyprus.
On 5 July 1958, in the square of Avgoros, Loukia Lautari Papageorgiou and Panagis Zacharias fell fighting for their homeland during the long and bloody clash between the unarmed inhabitants of the village and dozens of English soldiers.
With the villagers resisting boldly and bravely against the English soldiers with only stones, bottles and sticks as weapons.
That day the English soldiers arrested the manager of the THOI canteen and a young boy, with orders to take down the posted motto in the Square.
The women of the community took the lead in managing to free them and hide the boy. The English, at the risk of being embarrassed by the extraordinary courage of the villagers, retreated by firing in all directions with an armoured vehicle machine gun.
During the shooting, Lucia Lautari was hit in the head. Mother of six children and pregnant.
The epilogue of the farmer and father of five children, Panagios Zacharias, who was beaten to death, was also written in bloody letters.
And this was the spirit of the struggle that every Cypriot and every Cypriot woman carried within them. In front of the defence of the homeland, there was no room for second thoughts. The flame of freedom burned unquenched in their souls.
The active involvement of the two families in the struggle is also remarkable.
In the orchard of Lucia Lautari Papageorgiou there was a uniquely constructed hideout where many wanted soldiers were hiding.
In Panagi's house they hid the polygraph, with his children joining the Alkimo Youth of EOKA and the task forces.
"Every forty days I fall to the sacrifice of a son, I kneel down, please, I pray for freedom," were the stirring words of Florentzou over the grave of her son George, forty days after the death of her first son, Andreas.
Compatriots,
Today we honor our heroes, we also honor the heroines who gave birth to their children knowing that they were walking on the path of "the immortals".
The heroine Flourentzou is the mother of Andreas Karyos, who was imprisoned and tortured in the Pyla Detention Centre and subsequently burned to death in the legendary battle of Ahtironas along with Fotis Pitta, Ilias Papakyriakou and Christos Samaras, on 2 September 1958.
Forty days after the death of her son Andreas, Flourentzou was informed about the self-sacrifice of her son Georgios in the battle of Astromeritis.
George Karyos, imprisoned in the Kokkinotrimythia Detention Centre, learning about the battle of Ahtironas, escapes and ends up in the village of Astromeritis.
On the evening of October 18, 1958, an ambush was set up by local EOKA members in order to defeat Turkish corporals who were collaborating with the British. The four-member guerrilla group, to which the wanted fighter Georgios Karyos belonged, also joined the battle.
Georgios Karyos fights his last battle on October 19, 1958, and heavily wounded, he ends up in the Nicosia General Hospital, where he breathes his last breath on October 28, 1958.
The question of how the village was surrounded by English troops at dawn on 19 October remains unanswered about the battle of Astromeritis.
George Karyos, despite his partial disability, did not hesitate to enlist and fight for his country in the armed liberation struggle of 55-59.
Today we commemorate the memory of the thirteen-year-old novice monk Spyridon Pericles, who was murdered by the Turks on January 1, 1964, during the Turkish counter-insurgency of 1963 - 1964, at the Monastery of Our Lady of Milk and Milkweed in Korno.
The pain in our souls remains unquenchable. [OUR CYPRUS HAS NOT CALMED DOWN, THE BLOOD OF THE HEROES WHO WATERED OUR MOUNTAINS WAS NOT ENOUGH TO REDEEM THIS PAINFUL LAND, AND 15 YEARS LATER, ON 20 JULY 1974, THE TURKISH ATILLA INVADED THE ISLAND.
The black memories of 1974 remind us that our debt was not completed for our still enslaved homeland.
As the poet Kostas Montis wrote in his poem, "this doll with the severed hand, hanging in the window of the demolished house, which child did she want to say goodbye to, which child did she crawl to the window to raise her hand and have it cut off?"
Compatriots,
We stand here today, in the Holy Church of the Apostles Paul and Peter, among the families of our heroes, paying tribute to all those who selflessly gave breath by breath for our country to breathe.
With our eyes fixed on our occupied territories, on Pentadaktylos, Apostle Andrew, Morphou and Karavas, with our thoughts on the families of the missing, the difficult lives of our stranded and the difficult road we have to travel to achieve another liberation, we must remain loyal and united to our homeland.
Finding a just and viable solution to the Cyprus problem is as necessary as ever.
Good luck!
Eternal be the memory of our heroes.
__________
MK
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs to PIO
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or PIO
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