President Nikos Christodoulides on Sunday demanded “accountability and punishment” for those responsible for the deaths of Tasos Isaac and Solomos Solomou, who were both killed during two separate demonstrations in the buffer zone near Dherynia during August 1996.
“There are moments when any words fail to capture the images etched into the collective memory of a people and an entire nation, becoming synonymous with gallantry, a symbol of self-sacrifice, and a beacon for every person who demands the inalienable right to live freely,” he wrote in a post on social media.
He added, “two such shocking images were captured 30 years ago with Tasos Isaac and Solomos Solomou the tragic protagonists, who, with their martyrdom, the cruel murder of them, not only made known to all humanity the illegality which occupying Turkey has been committing in our homeland since 1974, but also defined our own obligation to the land”.
“Accountability and punishment of those who murdered Isaac and Solomou is our people’s universal demand, an obligation of the European Union, a duty of the international community. And justice is not revenge; it is a matter of principle. It is a matter of dignity,” he said.
Isaac was killed on August 11, 1996, when Greek Cypriot motorcyclist protesters were met in the buffer zone by Turkish Cypriot counter-protesters who, according to the United Nations report on the incident, were “joined by members of the Grey Wolves who had come from Turkey”.
As demonstrators from both sides broke into the buffer zone, the incident became violent. Isaac found himself entangled in barbed wire in the buffer zone and was beaten to death by Turkish Cypriots and Turks who had also entered the buffer zone.
Solomou was killed three days later when, following Isaac’s funeral, Greek Cypriot demonstrators once again travelled to Dherynia.
He distanced himself from his fellow protesters and walked towards a Turkish military post, attempting to climb a flagpole to remove a Turkish flag, before being shot dead by a Turkish soldier.
Christodoulides’ social media post comes after he had attended an event in Paralimni to mark the 30th anniversary of both men’s deaths, at which he had said that “Tasos was martyred at the hands of his bloodthirsty murderers in an inhumane manner, while Solomos was murdered while exposing to the eyes of humanity, the eyes of the whole world, the symbols of the illegal occupation”.
“The photographs from that very difficult August of 1996, which dressed Cyprus and Hellenism across the world in black, are irrefutable documents of two heinous crimes, which have both moral instigators and physical perpetrators,” he said.
On this front, he said that 18 arrest warrants were issued for those believed to be linked to both men’s deaths, and stressed that “despite the refusal of the occupation regime and, of course, Turkey to execute the said warrants, I want to promise you tonight … that the Republic of Cyprus will intensify its efforts to execute the warrants”.
“We know, and we have proven it in practice in some other cases, and in fact, we were recently threatened publicly on the matter of property usurpers, that when we want something to happen, it will happen, and I promise you that we will do it,” he said.
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