VANDALS attacked the house of former AKEL leader Ezekiel Papaioannou on Sunday and torched the old red Lada he used to drive, drawing the ire of political parties across the spectrum.
Vandals broke into the house of Papaioannou off Makarios Avenue in Nicosia, now a museum dedicated to the life and times of the long-serving AKEL leader, at around 3.30am on Sunday.
According to police, they wrote obscene slogans on the wall of the house, spray-painted crosshairs on his statue and set alight his J-registration red Lada Samara, causing serious damage to the 35-year-old car.
The investigating officer told the Cyprus Mail that police have questioned over 15 people in connection with the case. The potential suspects belong to ten different extremist organisations, he noted.
“It’s very hard to actually pin it on someone unless you catch them red-handed,” he said.
The crosshairs symbol is often used by the far-right extremist organisation Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn), but many other extreme organisations, including the anarchists, have adopted the symbol, noted the investigating officer.
AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou said the latest incident of vandalism “undermined the political culture of our place while trying to import a new morality into the political life of the place”.
Kyprianou said the party more or less knew who was responsible for the vandalism, noting it’s one thing to establish who was responsible and another to prove it. It would be irresponsible to blame any specific political party, he added.
“If they think they are insulting the memory of Ezekiel Papaioannou, they are gravely mistaken because his contribution to Cypriot history has been written with golden letters,” said the AKEL leader.
Opposition party DISY leader, Nicos Anastassiades blamed the incident on the atavistic behaviour of brainless people. He called on police to investigate the case in depth and other vandalisms of national symbols.
“Not only is it unacceptable, it is a step backwards by brainless people. Nobody, at least not the political parties, can accept this any longer,” he said.
Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou said the recent spate of vandalisms reminded of the traumatic past of the country. They harm unity on the domestic front and undermine our political culture, he added.
Papaioannou was the general-secretary of AKEL for almost 40 years, from 1949 until his death. He was born in the Limassol area and educated at the American Academy in Larnaca. Papaioannou then worked as a miner in Cyprus for a time until he went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, along with another 60 Cypriots volunteers. After the civil war, he moved to London working as a milkman before returning to Cyprus where be became involved in local politics. After the island’s independence he was elected to parliament, where he served as a deputy for 28 years, right up to his death. He bequeathed his entire estate to AKEL.
