On 19 July 1998 Eleni Foka marched alongside the members of the “Lobby for Cyprus” and when the march reached Trafalgar Square Mrs Foka was led to the podium and waited her turn to speak. The only people who approached her and greeted her, she later told us, were Mr Kyriakos Tsiupras (a correspondent of RIK at the time) and Mr Andreas Karolis, Secretary of the EKO (National Cyprus Federation). The latter told her to go ahead and stand by the wife of the High Commissioner, Mr Attalidis. Mrs Foka went ahead but for unknown reasons, once there, Mrs Attalidou changed her position.
The main speaker at the Square was the then Minister of Interior of the Republic of Cyprus, Mr. Dinos Michaelides (deceased 6/4/2020), followed by Mr. Haris Sofoklidis, then President of EKO, and 12 British MPs.
From all of them we have heard the familiar and repeated for 24 years, funny rhetoric, hollow and colonialist promises from the safe side for “solution” racist bi-zonal bicommunal federation. Incomprehensible applause from Greek refugees below. Who were otherwise marching... asking for the liberation of their occupied villages and towns...
Mr. Sophocleides had forgotten the teacher from the occupied Agia Triada of Karpasia. At the suggestion of members of the “Lobby for Cyprus» he invited her to speak. They had all spoken! She was the lately!
Foka's speech was just two pages typed and instead of three minutes, it was admittedly six minutes long. She had hardly reached the end of the first, and Mr. Sophocles seemed to be whispering something to her. urging her on to something. He was asking her to shorten, to finish!
We are not allowed to speak out against the Bi-zonal
Eleni Foka ignored the urges and finished. She was applauded by the crowd. Some faces of foreigners and our people on the podium nodded. Not because she passed the... three minutes! But how a man could slip up and speak against the I.D.O.! Incomprehensible! Mr. Haris Sofoklidis immediately followed Eleni Foka downstairs and verbally attacked her for her speech. The people around Eleni Foka were stunned by his behaviour.
«You underestimated our intelligence. You shouldn't have said what you said. We don't know the Cyprus problem and we wanted you to explain it to us? You insulted the British MPs...»
I note that the «friends», then including Pauline Green, did not have the slightest decency to greet her with a simple handshake... Like some of our people...
The “slave” didn't fit
Otherwise, after the march and traditional speeches, the British MPs were rewarded with a meal from EKO. Eleni Foka did not fit into the “official lunch”. She belongs to another party... Those who are still fighting and giving their blood for there to be freedom for all. An attitude that had nothing to envy from that of the South African apartheid...
Eddie O'Hara on the road...
Leaving Trafalgar Square and heading towards the car of Eleni Foka's cousin Mr. Leontios Christodoulou (there were four of us - the writer and her husband, Helen and her cousin), on the opposite pavement the Labour MP «friend», Eddie O'Hara with his wife. He did not turn to say hello. Then Helen's cousin shouted at him in a loud voice : ’Hey, Mr. O'Hara, come see our Helen”. They had to cross the road and came. In a hesitant manner he waved. And when Helen said to him: “24 years Mr. O'Hara is too long, nothing has happened, what are you doing...”, O'Hara replied cynically as they hurried away: “Next year you will go home. We will have to talk to the Americans”!
The same «friend» Labour MP (otherwise Greek-speaking) who on 3 March 1997 from the floor of the House of Commons had said: “Parliament must never forget the legitimacy of the Turkish invasion in 1974...” (He considered the first invasion legal and only the second illegal).
Eleni Foka was not present in the EKO's announcement given to the media for the event. On the contrary, in the response of the Cyprus News Agency, Eleni Foka was mentioned, according to a report in the Cypriot press.
Speech by Eleni Foka at Trafalgar Square 19 July 1998
Dear brothers and sisters and distinguished guests,
It is with great joy and emotion that I am among you after 24 years of brutal and brutal Turkish invasion and occupation and being driven from my home and work for a year. To assert once again our demand to all those who turn a deaf ear, to the international organizations and powers of the earth, that we do not forget and demand liberation and not illegal and disguised solutions...
24 years and still no human rights organization has been allowed to visit our occupied territories and investigate the brutal and barbaric systematic human rights violations of the enslaved people of Carpathia...
The same tactics for the destruction of our environmental heritage... The Turks are burning our forests and for firewood our olive trees and olive groves...
21 years later in December 1995, the UN Secretary General submitted a report to the Security Council recording serious allegations of human rights violations with recommendations to the Turkish side by UNFICYP to improve the living conditions of the interned... Never adopted by the Turkish side....
24 years of conciliation, pressure, concessions, talks and yet foreign powers are proposing unjust solutions, not to say treasonous solutions, completely ignoring the interests and human rights of the legitimate inhabitants of Cyprus who have been there for thousands of years. They are proposing solutions that serve their own economic and generally strategic, military interests and those of Turkey.
They are trying to impose on us dichotomous solution such as the bicommunal bizonal federation in order to legitimize with our signature and our consent the finalities of a barbaric and illegal Turkish invasion and occupation. They are asking us to accept the disappearance, the uprooting from the land of our ancestors, as was done in practice with the 3rd Vienna Agreement. The bizonal bicommunal federation, my dear brothers and sisters, will make us the last Greeks in our Greek Cyprus.
The Cyprus problem is not a problem of two communities as we are told because it is a matter of illegal invasion and occupation. That is why it is a problem of enforcing international law and international legitimacy of human rights and freedom. Both the international organisations and the United Europe and, above all, the guarantor Britain have a huge responsibility to respect these principles and to apply them in Cyprus. Britain, the guarantor, therefore, has obligations beyond those arising from its participation in the Treaty of Guarantee, which it has unfortunately failed to observe.
When will we finally say enough is enough and raise our voices to whoever is forcing us to accept such solutions that benefit the conquerors, the perpetrators and not the victims? Who impose on us solutions with diminished human rights, with unacceptable and inhumane racial discrimination where the few will rule the many? When will we say that we ask for nothing more and nothing less than the implementation of the resolutions and declarations of the UN, the European Union and international law?;
24 years of occupation and crimes by a country that wants to become a member of Europe, which is even a member of the UN, is too much. We should not be ashamed or hesitate to demand the reversal of the fait accompli and to demand our national security. The security of our dignity, conscience and love for a homeland that has become a prisoner of foreign interests. The defence of our cultural heritage, of the democracy that Hellenism has brought to the whole of humanity, which is the birthplace of Greece, must be the beacon of the path that we must now choose to follow for the proper assertion of our rights.
My dear expatriate brothers and sisters - When we are promised a just and viable solution, we should not be too eager to reply that only liberation is just and viable for us. No bizonal bicommunal federation is just and viable because it is a flagrant violation of our human rights. So how can it be applauded as just and viable?;
Thank you and freedom to our Cyprus”.
Fanoula Argyrou
