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- Ελληνικά
The tragic events taking place today in the Eastern Mediterranean region, following the military conflicts in Israel, inevitably bring back the grim and painful memories of the black summer in Cyprus, in July and August 1974.
When our country experienced the full extent of the suffering and horror of war.
Almost half a century after the double crime against Cyprus, our people continue to enumerate the tragic consequences of the coup and the Turkish invasion, the illegal military occupation of our territories, the drama of hundreds of missing compatriots and the immoral, methodical attempt by Turkey to alter the history and the character of the occupied territories.
The memories are still excruciatingly present and the mental pain is piercing and unquenchable.
We have gathered today in this holy place to commemorate the fallen Neapolitans.
Those who fell heroically fighting during the Turkish invasion of 1974, those who died as a result of the war, as well as those who went away to the Lord while in exile.
To honour, also, the memory of those fighting for faith and patriotism serving in National Guard units in the area of Neapolis, Trachona and Omorphita and to pray to the Most High that the effort to find all our missing brothers and sisters may be successful.
We reverently bow our heads and with awe we remember the heroes, the war dead and our missing compatriots.
This is the least that every true defender of our country's freedom deserves.
This is due to those who, paraphrasing the lines of our poet Yannis Ritsos,
"When they shook hands, the sun was sure of the world,
when they smiled, a little swallow flew through their wild beards,
when they slept, a dozen stars fell from their empty pockets,
when they were killed, life went uphill with flags and drums."
For as the poet notes, they were fair, hearty, and true to their word. In adverse conditions, their actions spread hope in the world, and when in the end they were lost in the fog of betrayal and war, they did not consider their sacrifice unjust, because no sacrifice for freedom is wasted.
The words of Constantine Palaiologos to the Turkish porter echo through their sacrifice:
"It is a common opinion that we all die of our own free will and we are spared our lives".
The Neapolitans were sacrificed because, as Xenophon teaches us, they felt the soil of their homeland to be their home and their fellow countrymen to be their brothers and sisters.
"He thought of the homeland as home, and the citizens as partners."
For the Neapolitans, this was their homeland. Their home. This is what they fought for. For justice and freedom. For the principles and values bequeathed to them by their fathers and grandfathers.
For the Hellenism of Cyprus.
For their homes, for their families, for their children.
For the families and children who said a hasty goodbye on that black morning.
They would return soon, they were told. They can't not come back. They will show up one morning. And they will be waiting for them. And then the laughter will start again and the favors will return.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Heroically fighting in his hometown, the reserve second lieutenant of the 3rd Company of the 211 Infantry Battalion Sotiris Konstantinos Harilaou fell, who was buried in a mass grave in the military cemetery of Lakatameia. After identification, his remains were reburied in 2000 in the Macedonitissa Tomb.
With heroism and self-denial, Panagiotis Hadjigeorgiou, who rushed to report to the 211 Infantry Battalion and fought a decisive battle with the enemy to defend Nicosia, fell in combat. His remains were found in a mass grave in Trachona and he was buried in 2011.
In the Neapolis area, the athlete of the Neapolis Olympiad, Andreas Alexandrou, who was fatally wounded outside the Neapolis Police Station by mortar shrapnel that struck the area, also fell in the Neapolis area. He was buried in a mass grave in the Cemetery of Saints Constantine and Helen, where he was reburied in 2000 after his remains were identified.
The reserve lieutenant of the Commando Antonis Agrotis fought and was sacrificed in the battles of the Nicosia airport on 20 July 1974. His remains were found in a mass grave. In 2001, after the identification process, he was reburied with hero's honours in the Cemetery of Saints Constantine and Helen.
Along with them, the second lieutenant engineer Marios Fisentzidis, who perished during a mission to lay minefields in the areas of Karavas and Lapithos, when they were occupied by Turkish troops after an overwhelming resistance to the end by weak sections of the National Guard on 6 August 1974. In 2010, his family received his remains, which were found in a mass grave near the reed fields of Airkotissa, where he and his three digging comrades-in-arms fought their last stand against Turkish invaders. He was reburied in the Tomb of Makedonitissa.
The list of the missing includes to this day the names of Cleovulos Pantelis, a native of Trachona, an athlete of the Neapolis Olympiad, who served his military service in the National Guard as a corporal in the 241 Infantry Battalion, and Georgios Hadjikyriakos, a reserve lieutenant of the 366 Infantry Battalion. The latter, in the summer of 1974, interrupting his medical studies in Athens, returned to Cyprus and joined the front line in defence of his homeland. His traces were lost in the area of Mili of Karavas.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I feel obliged to make special mention of the other heroically fallen and missing members of the 3rd Company of the 211 Infantry Battalion.
Nurtured with the seeds of the Greek ideal, they looked history in the face and without a second thought found themselves fighting at the front, in an unequal war confrontation.
The 3rd Company of the 211th Infantry Battalion suffered heavy losses in the shocking fight to defend Nicosia in the northern suburbs of Omorphita, Neapolis, North Pole and Trachona. The battlefields that greeted the lifeless bodies of its fighters will bear witness to the greatness of the self-sacrifice and selfless patriotism they displayed in the most difficult hours of our country's modern history.
Ladies and gentlemen,
"The heart is a strange thing", wrote our "laureate poet" Costas Montis.
"The more you waste it, the more you have."
If anything characterizes the sacrifice of the heroes we commemorate today, it is this inexhaustible reserve of soul and heart.
We therefore renew our oath of struggle until the final vindication of our homeland.
We declare that we will not settle for the habit of the prolonged distorted state of things.
We will not settle for the existing status quo of occupation and partition.
We will continue to fight with all our strength until the holy day of return to our enslaved lands.
We will continue to struggle with all our strength until the holy day of return to our enslaved lands.
We will continue to fight with all our strength until the holy day of return to our enslaved lands.
We will continue to defend what is in danger and to claim what belongs to us.
We must, with dedication and faithfulness to our goal, continue to take initiatives to finally open the road of dialogue through which we seek to achieve what we want. The liberation and reunification of our country, within the framework of a mutually acceptable, viable and workable solution to the Cyprus problem.
A solution that will allow our country to breathe freely, without occupying troops and without foreign guarantees.
History teaches us that the desired result is achieved only when Hellenism, united, with unity of purpose and unity of purpose, strives as a whole to achieve the common goal.
Therefore, walking on the path paved by the heroes we honour today, we must, in our turn, put every ounce of our strength behind us and prove ourselves worthy of history and the criticality of the times.
This has been taught to us by the fighting spirit, altruism, conscientiousness and the high sense of duty and dignity that the heroes of Neapolitans showed until the last moment.
Eternal may their memory and glory accompany them.
May our prayers for the fate of all our missing be answered by the Lord.
Thank you.
(ASP/NZ)
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