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- Ελληνικά
"...I will throw myself into the race. I will fight honestly and bravely. I will fight for the people."
Very rarely through just a few words can one define oneself so eloquently and vividly. All the more so when we are talking about a personality as great as Kyriakos Matsis.
I will throw myself into the struggle, without hesitation, with determination, with the momentum that the justice of my struggle gives me. I will fight honestly and valiantly, I will fight as I have learned to live, with the dignity that possesses me as a human being, with the vigour that emanates from my Greek soul. I will fight standing, unyielding against the English oppressor for the rights of my homeland, for the vindication of my historical legacy. I will fight for the people, for the people who have taken their fate into their own hands, who defy the tyranny and oppression of the great of the land, for the people who stand up. And I will fight for this people who deserve to walk proudly, who deserve to live with dignity, who deserve to live free. For I am the voice of this people, their will.
This was Kyriakos Matsi's historical imperative, that he would not negotiate our history with anyone, he would not negotiate the pride of our people.
These are the sacred and non-negotiable values and legacies that Kyriakos Matsis and all his fellow fighters and heroes of the national liberation struggle of EOKA leave us. For they are every word of the history of this people. And it is this History that we are obliged today in our turn to serve to the end, justifying the visions, sacrifices and struggles of our heroes and our entire people.
Kyriakos Matsis, the "Cross Eagle of Pentadaktylos", was born in the village of Paleochori, here in Pitsillia in January 1926. His parents were Christofis and Kyriakou Matsi and his brothers George and Giannakis.
He learned his first letters in the primary school of his village and after graduation he went to Famagusta and attended the Greek Gymnasium. From his school years his unique personality began to emerge. He writes short stories, verses and analyses of literary works. Through his surviving youthful writings, his desire to fight for his homeland and for freedom is evident.
Coming from a peasant family, he was well aware of the difficult living conditions of the people, especially in the countryside and the rural world. It was, moreover, one of the reasons that led him in 1946 to the Agricultural School in Thessaloniki to pursue his studies.
His acquaintance with Greece would "connect" him in a transcendental way with the "Great Homeland", as he himself called Greece. Living at the time of World War II, he listened to the hopes of the Greeks of Cyprus for self-determination, for unification and the throwing off of the British yoke. Hopes that were dashed immediately after the end of the war, since the British plans for Cyprus were different.
Returning home after completing his studies, he settles in Famagusta, where he lives and works as an agronomist. In the town of Evagora, Matsis developed a rich social, cultural and political activity, founding a trade union organization to defend the rights of the peasants.
He was one of the first to join the national liberation struggle of EOKA, with the flame of self-sacrifice for the freedom of our people illuminating his action. Very soon he assumes the vital position of EOKA liaison leader.
On 9 January 1956 he is arrested by the British after treason and is horribly tortured in the detention cells, the hellholes of Omorphita, in order to betray the secrets of EOKA which he knew and which were so valuable to the colonialists.
So valuable that Marshal Harting himself, visiting the Omorphita detention facilities, offered him the outrageous sum of 500,000 pounds for the time to betray Digenis. Unfortunately for the English, the answer would come through the genuine long Greek history that only a pure Greek soul could articulate after so much physical torture: "We do not fight for money, but for virtue". Kyriakos immediately left the meeting place and headed back to his cell, thus showing Harting to his face his disdain for the thought and attempt to redeem his ideals, principles and values, and translating the heroic allegory of our national poet into action. He proceeded relentlessly into the light, like Jesus Christ. Genuine salt of the earth[/I]."
After the detention centre of Omorphita, Kyriakos Matsis is transferred to the detention centre of Kokkinotrimithia. After much preparation, feeling like a lion in a cage, on 13 September 1956 he managed to escape and, now with a bounty of 5,000 pounds, he was re-appointed section head of the Kyrenia district.
His struggle continued tirelessly at all levels until 19 November 1958. On that day his hideout in Dikomo was surrounded by the British. To their call to surrender he chooses to answer that if he comes out he will come out shooting.
The British, showing their cruel and inhuman face, blow up the hideout by throwing grenades. Kyriakos is burnt to death and his soul passes into the world of the immortals. It was a conscious decision by Kyriakos. He knew, he believed that freedom requires sacrifice, it is won with blood. After all, he dedicated his life to writing about the ideal of freedom and proved his words with actions, with the sacrifice of his own life.
His words will echo eternally wherever there is an inch of Hellenism, "Do not forget", he wrote, "that from this generation will spring the new Leonids and the new Themistocles, the new Souliotes and the new Spartans. Do not forget that we are Greeks. And as Greeks let us stand on the height of our history, proud and dignified...And then let us all work for that great day, when the life-giving wind of freedom will light up all the slave peoples of the earth..."
I stand before you today, in this sacred place, in the heroic community of Paleochori, fully aware of the weight of my historical responsibility. Your faces reflect the anguish and longing for the return to our beloved occupied lands, from Morphou to Apostle Andrew, in every corner of our illegally occupied land. Fully feeling that in the face of our people is reflected the very history of Kyriakos Matsis, the history of the Hellenism of our homeland. A history of perpetual struggle for the defence of the dignity of the weak, for freedom and justice, for peace and equality.
And the responsibility is heavy because it is our homeland that is still under occupation. That is why, from the first day I took office, we have constantly taken initiatives despite the difficulties, the frustrations, the problems created by the Turkish side.
It is for this reason that I intensify our efforts on a daily basis, so that we can immediately get back to the negotiating table and through dialogue, with the United Nations resolutions and the principles and values of the EU, of which the Republic of Cyprus is a member state and will continue to be after a possible solution to the Cyprus problem, to reach the desired goal of liberation, reunification and a viable and functional solution.
And I want you to be sure that we will continue to demand the obvious. To live in conditions of security and political stability, to be citizens of a normal country, without citizens deprived of basic human rights, which is a place of peace and creation, and which creates the conditions for development and prosperity. We want to give our children the right to live without fear of tomorrow.
Kyriakos Matsis and our heroes, their struggles and sacrifices strictly define our own debt to the homeland and the framework of our efforts.
We therefore owe to Kyriakos, to all those whose sacrifice led us to the Republic of Cyprus, what is most important to us today. We owe it to the new generations to fight for a free and prosperous homeland. So we will not stop fighting until the longed-for reunification is achieved, which will ensure legitimacy, human rights and civil liberties for all the legal inhabitants of this land.
(PM/NG/EATH)
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