FOREIGN Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides yesterday paid tribute at the funeral of a Greek Cypriot woman known as the ‘Granny of ELDYK’, the Greek contingent to Cyprus.
Kalliopi Avraam was 78 in 1974 when she was killed during the Turkish invasion and buried in a mass grave along with unidentified soldiers at a Nicosia cemetery.
Her remains were recently identified as part of the government’s exhumation efforts and her funeral took place in Nicosia yesterday.
Avraam, who was from Kyrenia, lived opposite the ELDYK camp in the Karaouli area. Her husband died in 1968 and she remained on her property looking after her few farm animals. She befriended the young Greek soldiers and supplied them daily with warm milk, eggs and other produce, and was known as “granny” by the soldiers.
On July 20, 1974, the day of the coup, she refused to be moved to a safe place because she didn’t want to leave her “children”, and remained at her home until the day of the invasion, August 15 when the ELDYK soldiers moved to a nearby school.
The next day, the school was destroyed in a Turkish air raid and Avraam and the ELDYK soldiers were killed.
In the chaos that ensued, bodies were taken from all over and buried without identification at various cemeteries.
“Today after 27 years, with the help of science, the fallen are being raised from the anonymity of unmarked graves and buried with the honour which befits their sacrifices,” Cassoulides said in his funeral address.
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.
