Motorcyclists taking part in the Isaac and Solomou memorial initiative visited the Acropolis on Wednesday as part of a ten-day tour across Greece marking 30 years since the deaths of Tassos Isaac and Solomos Solomou.

Following their visit to the historic site, a delegation of riders met Greek President Konstantinos Tasoulas.

The group departed Limassol by ferry last Wednesday for Piraeus before beginning a journey through a series of locations chosen for their symbolic associations in Cyprus.

Stops on the route include Karavas in Kythira, Salamina in Attica, Rhodes, Kastellorizo, as well as Kerynia in the Peloponnese, whose namesake heralds from the ancient Achaeans who themselves settled and founded Kyrenia.

The memorial ride commemorates Tassos Isaac, who was beaten to death on August 11, 1996, after becoming trapped in barbed wire during demonstrations in the UN buffer zone near Dheryneia, and Solomos Solomou, who was shot dead three days later while attempting to remove a Turkish flag from a flagpole at a Turkish military position.

Before the group’s departure from Limassol, the initiative’s representative Kyriacos Yiangou said the tour aimed to keep alive the demand for justice and the right of Cypriot refugees to return to their homes.

“We are demanding the right to freely go to our land, the right to freedom, the right to dignity, the right to justice,” he said.

Yiangou said each memorial ride carried particular emotional significance and that members of Isaac’s family, including his mother, daughter and sisters, regularly participated.

“The bikers honour the memory of the martyrs, they do not forget and we all try, through their sacrifice, to send the messages emanating from it,” he said.

The current journey is the initiative’s third commemorative tour, following previous rides in Germany in 2016 and Greece in 2021.

The programme also includes events organised in cooperation with local authorities and Cypriot organisations in Greece.

After returning to Cyprus, the riders are expected to meet President Nikos Christodoulides before travelling to Paralimni in August to mark the anniversaries of the killings.