A ceremony was heled in Limassol on Sunday to commemorate the 51st anniversary of the death of George Grivas, the leader of Eoka between 1955 and 1959 and the founder of Eoka B.
The ceremony was held in Limassol’s St Nicholas church and was hosted by Amathus Bishop Nikolaos, with Migration Deputy Minister Nicholas Ioannides and House President Annita Demetriou among the attendees.
The memorial service at the church was followed by a procession to his grave, with attendees laying wreathes.
Given the controversy surrounding Grivas, the police had drawn up a “special action plan” to deal with the ceremony, with an exclusion zone set up, over 200 police officers deployed, the Aiandas water cannon on standby, and all attendees subject to police checks.
One arrest was made after a man was found to be in possession of a “prohibited spray”.
Akel was incensed at the holding of the ceremony, describing it as a “provocation towards the people”.
“The Christodoulides government, Disy, and Elam bowed down again this year to the scoundrel of our homeland, Grivas. The annual gathering of the right wing and the far right, in the presence of our government, at a memorial service for the leader of Eoka B, is nothing but a provocation against this country’s history and democracy,” the party said.
It added that the ceremony constituted “an insult to those who resisted and fought in 1974, to the missing, to the displaced persons, and to the victims of the tragedy of Cyprus”.
It added that Annita Demetriou’s presence is evidence that Disy, the party she leads, is “continuously moving towards the far right, towards its most extreme, nationalist, and conservative wing”.
It also said that in attending the ceremony, Demetriou was ignoring a resolution which passed through parliament in 2022 which called on all state institutions to “respect the memory and the wounds of the Cypriot people and refrain from manifestations of honour and heroism of all those who turned against democratic legitimacy”.
The resolution had also described Grivas as “unworthy of any kind of honour”.
Akel also called on pro-government parties to “take a position” on Ioannides’ presence at the ceremony.
Disy responded in kind, saying Akel will make “any attempt to identify Eoka’s national struggle for liberation with turbulent events in modern history to only serve its own political purposes”.
“Fortunately for all of us, Cypriot Hellenism has an opposing view and, far away from whatever effort Akel may make, will continue to honour our national struggle for liberation, without excluding its leader, who led Eoka fighters to their successful confrontation with the British Empire,” it added.
Akel then responded in kind, saying, “the mere fact that Disy characterises the coup d’état, the betrayal, and the tragedy which bloodied our homeland as simply ‘turbulent events’ reveals its true aim.
“However, no matter how much they whitewash Grivas and Eoka B, the Cypriot people literally know in their skin what treason means, having paid for it in blood. Disy and the government must understand that historical memory is not intolerance. Intolerance is honours and festivals for those who turned their weapons against democracy and our homeland.”
They also called on pro-government political parties to “stop hiding and take a stand”, and Edek then did.
Edek said its “unmoving position was and is that state institutions must not be represented at George Grivas’ memorial service”, adding that Eoka B was an “illegal organisation which violently undermined the Republic of Cyprus’ statehood and the legal government of the day”.
It also said it had been Eoka B members who had “actively participated in the treacherous coup d’état of July 15, 1974, which opened the gates for the Turkish invasion and occupation of our homeland”.
Grivas was a hardline Greek nationalist, having attended military school in Greece as a teenager in 1916 and subsequently fought in Greece’s disastrous Asia Minor campaign in 1922 and on the Albanian front in 1940 during World War II.
Back in Cyprus, he led the Eoka paramilitary group, which fought to unite Cyprus with Greece, between 1955 and 1959, and believed that Archbishop Markarios III’s renouncing of ‘enosis’, union with Greece, and acceptance of independence in 1959 was a betrayal of the cause he had fought for.
He refused to acknowledge the treaties securing the creation of the Republic of Cyprus and returned to Greece, where he was received as a hero, promoted to the rank of general, and given a life pension on full pay.
He returned to Cyprus in 1964 amid the outbreak of intercommunal violence, but was recalled to Greece three years later after a number of bloody incidents on the island had Greece and Turkey to the verge of war with Turkey openly threatening to invade Cyprus.
He then returned again in 1971, calling on Greek Cypriots to renew their fight for enosis, and setting up a new paramilitary group, Eoka B, to fulfil that cause. A new cycle of violence ensued, with Grivas dying of a heart attack in his hideout in Limassol on January 27, 1974.
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