It was the first of April... In 1955. And today, on the first day of April, we stand here in the Holy Church of St. George, with reverence, but also with national pride, and we search for the words that befit the deeds of ordinary people who once again became heroes and martyrs, giants of conscience, giving the world lessons of honor and dignity, but above all a lesson of humanity.
"With the help of God, with faith in our honest struggle, with the support of all Hellenism...", thus began the Proclamation of the beginning of the anti-colonial struggle of the Cypriots. With Archbishop Makarios III as their spiritual and political leader and with George Grivas Digenis as their leader, the Cypriots, after having been patient and for 77 years had peacefully claimed liberation, counting on the liberalism of Britain, were disappointed and since they had to, they took up arms on April 1, 1955. They thus continued the unionist movement and the mass demonstrations from the beginning of the century, the October 1931 uprising, realizing the popular demand of the Unionist Referendum of 1950.
With the help of God... The Cypriot fighters were convinced of the rightness and sanctity of the struggle for freedom. They used the same schemes, the same words that came out of our national heritage. The oath of the Society of Friends and the Holy Company, the words of Kolokotronis who, together with his legendary deeds, assured with faith that "God signed the freedom of Greece and does not take back his signature...".
From that day on, with the youth in the front line, as witnessed by the courageous steps towards the gallows of the student-poet Evagoras Pallikaridis and the 23-year-old Michalakis Karoli, but also by the "Battle of Severio", until the sacrifice of the smallest martyr, the 7-year-old Dimitrakis Demetriades, the Cypriot people as a whole did not hesitate to stand up for universal human ideals before the dizzyingly superior size and power of the British Empire.
Scenes of patriotic self-denial and heroism that go beyond the limits of man were then dramatized throughout Cyprus. The desire for freedom and national vindication won the hearts and minds of the people. A heady air of freedom blew from the guerrilla dens of Pitsilia, to the barn of Liopetriou, the hideouts of Dikomo and the narrow streets of the cities.
March 25, April 1. These two national anniversaries, full of meaning and symbolism, distract us from the daily routine and the care of necessities and offer us mental uplift, national self-awareness of the great achievements of the national revolution of 1821 and the fighters and heroes of 1955, but also the necessary reflection. These days push us to think about our soul, our faith, our freedom, the other self that we surely hide within us. At the very moment when nature opened the joyful message of life to the world, at the very moment when the rayads of the 21st century and the amorous lads of Cyprus decided - if necessary - to sacrifice their lives for the spring of the nation. Around the same days, in spring, as when the despot of Old Patras Germanos unfurled the banner of freedom, Chief Digenes gave the great signal for the uprising of the Cypriots. But the Greeks of Cyprus had a flag in their hands to wave. The flag of Greece. The flag given to the nation by the Karaiskakis, the Kolokotrones, the Bouboulines, the Makriyannis and the Diakoi. To this flag and to the Gospel, fervent priests swore an oath to the fighters, renewing the indissoluble bond between our Orthodox faith and our idea of the World and the Homeland. And we always have an idea for the World and the Homeland. And no one will be able to change it. No one can change it for us.
One hundred and thirty-four years passed between 25 March 1821 and 1 April 1955.
One hundred and thirty-four years passed between 25 March 1821 and 1 April 1955. But we, the Cypriot Greeks, know that in reality it is as if these 134 years have not passed. It is as if 1 April was a continuation of 25 March in the same year. From 9 to 14 July 1821, beginning with the hanging of Archbishop Kyprianos and the deportation of the metropolitans Chrysanthos of Paphos, Meletius of Kition and Laurentius of Kyrenia, an orgy of terror and violence unfolded.
From 9 to 14 July 1821, beginning with the hanging of Archbishop Kyprianos and the deportation of the metropolitans Chrysanthos of Paphos, Meletius of Kition and Laurentius of Kyrenia. Hundreds of Christians were murdered all over Cyprus. But it was that centombe that gave rise, years later, to a special monument of poetic discourse, the 9th of July 1821, by our national poet Vassilis Michaelides. The unsurpassed expression of national consciousness and greatness with his iconic verses: "Romosity in the race of the world. No one has been found to silence it... Romosity is lost when the world is missing"
But with eloquence and historical insight, the poet praised the restraint, through the drama and martyrdom of Archbishop Cyprian, in a prophetic way: "amma 'knew that, being cut cavagin, around him were thrown roughly a hundred parapoules."
It is of these "parapoules" that we speak today.
"We have always been few and upon us have fallen so many and so many beasts to dig us up and eat us."
"We have always been few and upon us have fallen so many and so many beasts to dig us up and eat us. But no matter how much they eat something is left over. There is yeast left," Makriyannis was saying to the French admiral. This is the yeast we are talking about.
Beheaded by leadership and plunged for years into terror, Cyprus changed masters in 1878. The Cypriots were initially revived when the Turks left. They developed hopes and expectations. They rightly expected that the British would repeat the move they had made for the Ionian Islands. But to no avail. Promises made when they recruited Cypriots in World War II by putting the Greek flag in front of them were not fulfilled at all. After repeated embassies sent to London, and efforts at the United Nations, Cypriot Hellenism made up its mind. If they had to, they would take up arms!
The parapulas were harvested. The yeast fermented and flared into a tide of freedom.
And all at once, scenes of incredible courage and patriotic self-denial unfolded in Cyprus. The few fighters of the H.O.K.A. took on an entire empire. Without supplies and often with improvised humble weapons, they challenged and defeated the colonial power with the strength of their souls, courage and dedication to the cause. What gave school children the courage to go out in demonstrations when against them the English once even used guns? What was it that gave Sotiris Tsagaris the strength to tell his wife "mash the baby, I'm going somewhere and I'll be back" while going into a battle from which he did not come out alive? How did mothers simply give their wish to their son who was going to perish for the Fatherland?
There is no complicated explanation. They were simple and ordinary people, kneaded in our communal tradition and our Orthodox faith, people with love of country and national education. They were the mental make-up of people who lived in a familiar world and thought above all about what soul they would surrender. It was the reconciliation of our psyche that holds to the roots of our culture with what we seek in the world. They were people who had rooted in them the sense of "we" of which General Makriyannis spoke. They were people who believed and were committed to a cause above the trivial, the narrowly individual and everyday. People who believed and felt that life without freedom was not worth living. In our tradition, philanthropy was not separated from the Orthodox faith. So that in the ascetic tradition of a popular spiritualism, they could defeat death itself, because the time was coming when they believed that in the narrow space of Greek Orthodox culture even water can still be trodden on, that faith and devotion and mountains can be shaken and set aside.
It was the young people who prompted Nobel laureate Albert Camus, one of the world's greatest writers, to write "The Greek Child," a puff piece calling for the imminent hanging of Caraoli to be cancelled. But a decisive role had also been played, since the previous decades, by Greek education, which was first disseminated and generalised in the first half of the twentieth century and which implanted and shaped a modern national and social consciousness. The legendary EOKA uprising was preceded by an "educational revolution", with modern Greek education in Cyprus.
Greek Cypriots fought and sacrificed for freedom. We honour today special figures such as the great hero Grigoris Afxentiou, who became a holocaust for freedom, not hesitating to repeat Leonidas' "Molon Lave", such as Kyriakos Matsis, the gifted thinker who, with patriotic self-denial, repelled Harding's highly tempting attempt at bribery, proudly declaring "t is not for money that we fight, but for freedom". Like Marcos Drakos, James Patatsos, Fotis Pittas, Andreas Zakos, Evagoras Papachristophorou, Sotiris Tsagaris, Christos Samaras and so many others... The "rough and tumble", of which our national poet Vassilis Michaelides spoke. The EOKA emerged from the "parafoils" of 9 July 1821!
A French historian described the experience of the united struggle for the EOKA generation as a waking dream. It was indeed a dream. But the uprightness, virtue and piety of the people allowed them to bring it to life and give it flesh and bones from their own flesh and bones. Witness the pile of stalwarts who were reverently brought, when they could, back to the village by their own people. And then, along with the mourning, there was a festival, a festival of freedom that stirred the hearts of the other young people. The phenomenon of high school boys who somehow envied their classmates who had fallen in the Struggle and waited for their turn to come is shocking and unprecedented. In itself it testifies how ready Cypriot Hellenism was for the sacrifice of freedom.
Out of that waking dream, with the noblest of intentions and mobilizing the best of their ancestral virtues, the EOKA's legends paved the way wide open.
Young men, with adamantine faith and ethos, made the fruit of freedom and the desire for justice mature in them with a force that, without envy or intolerance, moved whole mountains like that mass of colonial tyranny that settled on the soul of the Greek Cypriots.
Young men, with adamantine faith and ethos, made the fruit of freedom and the desire for justice mature in them with a force that, without envy or intolerance, moved whole mountains like that mass of colonial tyranny that settled on the soul of the Greek Cypriots. The very psyche of the EOKA fighters provides answers to many questions of today. Because in their personality they gathered all those elements that made the epic of the united struggle brighten the Cypriot history and give the Cypriot Hellenism a pride that lasts forever.
Straightforwardness, virtue, devotion to the collective cause and the piety of the people allowed the dream to come to life and gave it flesh and bones from their own flesh and bones. From the peaks of Machairas and the hiding-places of Pitsilia and Dikomos, to the barn, the intoxicating song of the free Greek soul could neither hide nor be silenced. It poured into every Greek house in Cyprus, intoxicated young and old, made teenage men, made the cheeks of little girls blush and the withered braids of aged mothers rise. In the same swimming pool, the swimming pool of the oath of the EOKA fighters, we must immerse ourselves every moment if we want to hold our heads high and give meaning to the prosaic everyday life that absorbs us today more than ever.
The struggle of Cypriot Hellenism achieved what seemed impossible. It led to a retreat and an end to British occupation and colonialism. It is another matter if the policies thereafter could not complete the demand for self-determination-unification. But it did bring freedom to Cyprus and, for the first time, an independent state. This same state of the Cypriots that we are called upon to defend today with works of peace and creation against the aggression and greed of the expansionist and authoritarian Turkey.
At a time when the world is overshadowed by the drama of Ukraine, we express solidarity with a people that is now under attack and invasion, like Cyprus in 1974, we honour the epic of the EOKA 1955-59 struggle that successfully claimed the ideal of freedom. A universal ideal that is now at stake in Ukraine. The same ideals and human rights and freedoms for all Cypriots, through a real solution to the Cyprus problem that will end the occupation, but also the captivity of Cyprus by Turkey.
I think that big words and complicated meanings do not have much to add. Because the truth is as simple, as direct, as tangible: as the ashes of Gregory Afxentios. Simple words are so true because they awaken in us hidden memories even of things we have not lived, but which are things that fill the air we breathe. We feel the sacrifice, the holocaust, the haughty gaze, the steadfast step towards death that was the same step that climbed the steps of Levity of Evagoras Pallikaridis. We feel with our touch the taste of pride in the mouths of our heroes: just as we feel the rough touch of the rope that wrapped the necks of the nine hanged youths. With such milk let Greek Cypriot mothers continue to breastfeed their infants, with such stories let fathers put our boys and girls to sleep. Until the day of freedom dawns on this land. From Apostle Andrew to Kyrenia, from Morfu and Famagusta, to Lapithos and Karavas.
Long live the Struggle of the H.O.K.A.!
Honor and glory to our heroes who gave their lives for freedom!
(ΜΒ)
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