EOKA fighters are outraged over plans by Britons living in the north to erect a memorial to the 371 British soldiers killed during the Cypriot struggle for independence.
According to the website of the ‘Friends of the Cyprus Memorial’, a memorial is to be erected in the old British cemetery at Kyrenia to mark the 50th anniversary of “the ending of the Cyprus Emergency”.
On it will be inscribed the names of the 371 British servicemen – 28 members of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, 274 British Army, and 69 Royal Air Force who died there 1955-1959, the website said.
The Royal British Legion is part of the campaign, being organised by the Friends of the Cyprus Memorial. The monument is expected to cost £200,000 sterling and will be funded from public donations.
But in a written statement for the EOKA fighters’ association, Thasos Sophocleous called the move unethical and an insult to the Greek Cypriot people who had fought against the colonial power for independence.
“We are not saying that those 371 killed are not entitled to a monument, nor do we have the right to ban them, but we do have the right to tell them that they should be making this gesture of honour in their own country,” Sophocleous said in a written statement.
He was in Greece yesterday and could not be reached for comment.
Even worse,” he added. “Is the fact that the monument will be in the occupied areas without informing the government of Cyprus. And that is why their actions have political implications and are considered provocative.”
Sophocleous accused the Turkish Cypriot side of being complicit.
He said Britain was a big country with lots of land to create monuments for their dead. He said what was planned for Kyrenia was like the Germans and Italians creating monuments to their World War II dead in Britain, or like the Greeks building monuments to their dead killed in Turkey in 1922.
“Is there a monument in Turkey for the Armenians killed there?” he asked.
“This is a reversal of the moral order and a violation of international ethics.”
Sophocleous said Turkish Cypriots had also benefitted from the 1955-1959 EOKA struggle, “which freed them from the English yoke”.
He also criticised the British High Commission, which he acknowledges has no official involvement, “but tacitly approves” when it should have advised that this was the wrong thing to do.
“We strongly protest against this illegal and unethical action,” the statement added.
A spokesman at the High Commission said yesterday: “This is not a British government project and we are not involved.”
However, the High Commission may find themselves presented with a diplomatic dilemma when the monument is officially unveiled next April, since the High Commissioner might be invited to the event.
According to the website set up for the project, almost all Britain’s military dead remain buried at the British cemetery at Wayne’s Keep, which is in the buffer zone.
“Because public accessibility to Wayne’s Keep is in consequence exceedingly difficult – the UN reports that on average only one visitor a week manages to get there – the permanent memorial is to be sited in the old British cemetery at Kyrenia,” it said.
It said given the requirement of public accessibility, the old British cemetery in Kyrenia was a fitting site for a fixed memorial.
Established in 1878 when the British first arrived on the island, it is the last resting place of the only Victoria Cross recipient buried on the island.
Sergeant Samuel McGaw of the Black Watch lies beside four other members of his regiment, who also died in that first year of 1878.
After fighting in the Crimean War, McGaw disembarked at Larnaca on July 22, 1878, and set off for Camp Chiflik Pasha in Nicosia that same day. While on the march to the camp, Sergeant McGaw died of heat stroke.
The website said there were also other graves with strong military connections at the Kyrenia cemetery.
“The memorial is in remembrance of the dead, not the now distant conflict which ended 50 years ago,” said the group.
“It makes no political point, nor should it. Servicemen do not play politics, they simply serve their country whether that be in Cyprus, Iraq, Afghanistan or any of the many other conflicts remembered through memorials such as this.”
It also said that although the British cemetery in Kyrenia is in the “Turkish Cypriot North”, and in a state not recognised as such by the world at large, it remains “for all practical purposes British ground as it has been since the British arrived on the island in 1878.”
“The memorial has no place in the events which divided the island in 1974 or in the politics of the island today,” it added.
The group did say that after the reunification of Cyprus it may be that the memorial would be re-sited in the British military cemetery at Wayne’s Keep.
“But that is for the future. Until then, those who died before Britain departed the island, are remembered beside the graves of those who died when the British first arrived. The beginning and the end in the same place? That is history, not politics,” the website said.
The memorial will be the centrepiece of the cemetery, measuring 6.4 metres wide, and 2.5 metres high.
