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- Ελληνικά
With feelings of emotion and national pride we came today to the Holy Church of Apostolos Andreas to commemorate a champion of the freedom of our homeland.
"With what stones, what blood and what iron and what fire we are made. While we look like a mere cloud and they stone us and call us Airmen How we spend our days and nights God knows [...]"
Recalling the lyrics of our Nobel Prize-winning poet Odysseus Elytis, we pay due tribute to a fighter of democracy, a tireless supporter of resistance against enslavement, against tolerance and indifference.
To an internationalist in action and a fierce denouncer of yielding, fatalistic acceptance of defeat and apathy in the struggle for the liberation and reunification of Cyprus.
To a man who is a symbol of mental fortitude, highlighting the value of the struggle for vindication under any circumstances.
Because, as our national poet Dionysios Solomos very eloquently suggests:
"[...] Joys and riches be lost,
and kingdoms, and everything,
Nothing is, if the soul is steadfast and whole.
This was Theophilos Georgiades.
This was Theophilos Georgiades. A steady, whole soul.
An unending source of strength.
Thirty years after his brutal murder, his voice has not been silenced. On the contrary, it echoes even louder.
It is a pulsating message that teaches that the change we expect can only be achieved through relentless effort, altruistic struggle and sacrifice.
We still listen to it, in every struggle to defend our national dignity, with unabashed dynamism and uncompromising fortitude, calling us to resist all forms of subjugation.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Theophilos was born on September 9, 1957. After the Turkish invasion, like tens of thousands of other displaced compatriots, his family was forced to leave their home and property in Trachona and settle in the free part of the island.
At the tender age of 17, he experienced the full extent of the double crime of the coup d'état and the Turkish invasion, which had a decisive impact on his later life.
He realised very early on that the drama of refugeeism and the violation of human rights was a phenomenon that extended beyond the borders of Cyprus.
He realised that peoples in every corner of the world suffered from the deprivation of their basic freedoms.
When he graduated from the Pancyprian High School in 1975, he joined the National Guard and served his military service as a Reserve Officer in the Commando Forces.
Subsequently, he moved to Athens, where he studied at the Department of Political Science and International Studies of Panteion University and later specialized in Turkish Studies in France and Germany.
On his return to Cyprus, he joined the Press and Information Office as a Press Officer in the Turkish Affairs Department.
He was one of the pioneers of the movement then taking shape in Cyprus, which wanted our country to stand up and claim its right. One that resisted every attempt to silence every free voice. She who fought for the prevalence of universal human values.
Theophilos Georgiades dedicated himself to the high ideals of freedom, justice and democracy, and fought for the rebirth of Cypriot Hellenism. He fought passionately for the liberation and reunification of Cyprus.
He was devoted to the ideals with which he was nurtured as a young child in the family of EOKA fighter father Haralambos Georgiades and loving mother Elli. From his parents he inherited the deep and extended patriotic perception, honesty, philanthropy, love for the disadvantaged, for the unjust and the fellow human being unable to defend himself.
Although he was fully aware of the creeping danger inherent in excessive exposure to public life, his strong conviction that support and solidarity with peoples whose rights were being flagrantly violated, such as the Kurds, the Greeks of Pontus and the Armenians, would at the same time strengthen the position of Cypriot Hellenism, conscientiously and resolutely urged him to place himself at the service of his country.
In order to provide all possible assistance to the populations that had suffered genocide, atrocities and the violation of their human rights by Turkey, he wrote extensively and organized a series of conferences and demonstrations on the Cyprus problem, the Kurdish struggle, the genocide of the Pontians and the Armenian question.
Often stating that "the freedom of Cyprus passes through the mountains of Kurdistan", he joined the Kurdistan Workers' Party and became a key member of its journalistic organ in Athens, the magazine "Voice of Kurdistan", while he was also a founding member of the Cyprus Committee for Solidarity in Kurdistan.
He deeply believed and proclaimed that any assistance to the Kurdish guerrilla movement was a contribution to the struggle against Turkish expansionism in Cyprus and elsewhere.
His international action, which aimed at exposing the Turkish deep state, soon made him a target of the Turkish secret services.
The culmination of his efforts was the organization of an international conference in Brussels on 12 and 13 March 1994, the world's first international conference on the Kurdish question, focusing on Turkey's crimes against the Kurdish people. There he made sure that plenty of light was shed on the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the dramatic aspect of the missing persons, the violation of human rights, the deprivation of freedom and the illegal occupation of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus, and the oppression of the Kurdish people. The success of the conference and the international dimension of the conference outraged Ankara.
A week later, on Sunday 20 March 1994, outside his house in the former Thucydides Street in Aglantzia, Theophilos was shot dead by his assassin, who was paid by the Turkish secret services.
The 37-year-old freedom fighter Theophilos Georgiades breathed his last where his bust stands today, leaving his beloved wife Eleni a widow and their three children orphans. Charalambos, 13 years old at the time, Christos, 8 years old, and the one year old infant, Theodore.
On his chest, the reserve commandos, with whom he served, placed a green beret. A sign of the courage and bravery with which he fought, faithful to the ideals and values of his country and nation.
Honoured family of Theophilos Georgiades,
Greeks,
With his sacrifice, Theophilos gave us an inexhaustible legacy of values. He left behind him an invaluable legacy of humanism and the struggle for justice. An ark of pure patriotism and militancy.
Today, thirty years after his assassination, fully aware of the magnitude of his contribution, we, in turn, are called upon to draw attention to our own responsibility and obligation towards our homeland,as our visionary hero Kyriakos Matsis suggests, "confessing our mistakes and appreciating our merits", aware of who we are, with faith in our strengths and in the justice of our struggle, to claim the future we desire for our country.
This is the focus of the efforts of the Government and the President of the Republic Mr. Nicos Christodoulides.
The appointment of the new United Nations (UN) envoy to Cyprus creates the conditions and rekindles the hope for the resumption of talks aimed at reaching a just, viable and workable solution to the Cyprus problem.
A solution to be reached on the basis of the agreed framework and UN Security Council resolutions and in line with European principles and values.
A solution that will allow our country, free of occupying troops and foreign guarantees, to look to the future with optimism and its legitimate inhabitants to live together in security, equality and equality.
This future will be the best vindication for Theofilos Georgiades.
By his example, he becomes a holy beacon for all of us, indicating the path on which we must walk until final vindication.
I wish that the preservation of Theophilos' memory be a source of perseverance, strength and endurance until the holy hour of liberation and reunification of our homeland.
With the lyrics of Michalis Pasiardi, published a few days after his assassination, we salute him.
Who knew how to fight for all these things [...]
Theophile Georgiades;
The hands of the clock stopped for you, so unexpectedly,
but you show us that time is measured differently!"
His eternal memory.
Thank you.
(MS/NG)
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