Museum cautious on Eoka gun find

By Athena Karsera

THE NATIONAL Struggle Museum yesterday said it was responding cautiously to reports that a gun recovered in Paphos belonged to an executed Eoka hero.

Police on Tuesday announced that a single-barrelled hunting gun had been found near Evritou damn, with the surname of Eoka hero Evagoras Pallikarides engraved on it.

Police said the gun seemed to have been made in Cyprus and had been found wrapped in an old, battered bag.

But a spokesman at the Museum, which falls under the auspices of the Education and Culture Ministry, yesterday told the Cyprus Mail: “We have no idea what’s going on.”

“We’re not sure if its true,” the spokesman said. “All the ammunition and guns belonging to Eoka fighters were collected.”

He added that Eoka fighters did not usually write their names on their guns as it would be too dangerous for them if the weapons were found.

The spokesman said that the Museum would be speaking to Paphos police and to people who fought alongside Pallikarides.

Pallikarides was 18 years old when he was hung by the British after being found in ‘illegal’ possession of a weapon.

Pallikarides was arrested on February 25, 1957 and executed less than a month later.

He was still a pupil at a Paphos lyceum at the time and posthumously became well known for his poetry.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.