Akel to protest the opening of Grivas Dighenis museum in Chlorakas

Main opposition Akel will be holding a protest in Paphos over the ‘Grivas Museum’ to be opened in Chlorakas, an announcement from the party said.

According to the announcement released on Monday night, the party will be holding its protest on November 16 at 6:30pm at the PEO union’s yard in the city.

The main speaker at the event will be the party’s Secretary-General Stefanos Stefanou.

Akel said that the protest was originally scheduled to take place on November 12, but due to the funeral of Archbishop Chrysostomos II it was moved to a week later.

Last week, a small village in Paphos and its wish to create what some view as a controversial museum has sparked a political outcry just four months before the elections.

Main opposition Akel alerted that the House finance committee had unlocked the funding for a “Grivas Dighenis museum” in the village of Chlorakas, where the controversial Eoka leader Georgios Grivas secretly arrived on November 10, 1954, ahead of the launch of the struggle against British colonial rule on April 1, 1955.

According to Akel, not only was the funding for the museum, which had been given a less divisive different name, granted on Monday but it now had the blessing of Diko and Edek, parties which had originally opposed the funding.

“Unfortunately, this is the reality. It is disappointing,” said Akel MP Andros Kafkalias.

At issue is the home of the Azinas family allocated for the creation of what the village mukhtar Nicos Liasides had in 2018 termed as the “Chlorakas Historic Struggle Museum” to house a museum meant to be for all the wars Cypriots fought in, meaning both world wars, and the Eoka struggle in the 50’s.

In June, the budget that was meant to be allocated sparked debate in parliament, as most MPs at the time, including Edek and Diko, said Disy was attempting to pass funding by giving the museum a different name and saying it was dedicated to the world wars as well as the Eoka struggle.

Then, the head of Diko Nicolas Papadopoulos agreed with a request by Akel for an oral amendment to the budget referring to the paradox of the executive power changing the name of the museum.

But last week, Edek said: “The presentation of the museum in Chlorakas as a museum dedicated to Grivas does not correspond to reality. It is dedicated to the people of Chlorakas who fought during World War II in 1940 and during the struggle of 1955-1959.”

During a debate in parliament last Thursday, Diko’s Papadopoulos, who had kept mum on the subject for a few days, stepped up and called Akel’s tactics “fake news about Grivas”.