Women from Cyprus, Greece, Palestine and Ukraine spoke about grief, justice and the loss of children at an event in Nicosia on Saturday titled The voice of mothers.
Charita Mantoles and Andriana Nicolaou from Cyprus, Maria Karystianou from Greece, Hiba Wisia from Palestine and Olena Varenik Neokleous from Ukraine took part in the gathering at the Journalists’ House in Nicosia.
Mantoles, described at the event as a symbol of the 1974 Turkish invasion, spoke first. She said she was 27 and had two small children when she saw her husband, her father and five other close relatives killed in front of her eyes.
She said she was at her home in the Pente Mili area with her husband, her father and her two children, aged one and two, when the invasion began. She recalled that between the coup and the invasion, Pentadaktylos was burning and that “they were signalling to the Turks to come out”.
Mantoles said that on Saturday, July 20, 1974, she opened the window of her home and saw black smoke covering the sky. She said she woke her husband, who told her that “the Turks had come and that we should take the children and hide”.
“He took our son, who could not yet walk, and two baby bottles of milk, and I took our daughter. I woke my father too, we called my sister and we found shelter under the lemon trees,” Mantoles said.
She said that what followed was what people mean when they say “it is a madhouse”, with children crying on their own and searching for parents and grandparents.
She said a call-up order was being broadcast on a small radio they had with them, and that her husband and brother-in-law, both reservists, went to the camp at Glykiotissa, where there were no weapons and where, she said, the betrayal had become clear.
They later returned to the Pente Mili area and, according to Mantoles, Turkish forces began firing indiscriminately. She said they hid in a nearby basement and that the next morning, mortar fire was falling over their house, while they gave help to a wounded Greek Cypriot soldier.
“The Turks had surrounded the basement and were demanding that they surrender; they trampled on whatever belongings people had gathered. A young woman was bleeding between her legs and was holding a baby,” Mantoles said.
She added that one Turkish man, “who was not like the others”, hid in a hollow and, by giving a signal every few minutes, helped save the women and children.
Despite what she suffered during the invasion and the loss of her family members, Mantoles said she still wished that God would keep that Turkish man and his family well.
Karystianou, whose daughter died in the Tempi rail disaster in February 2023 in Greece, then took the floor.
She described February 28 as a night “that never ended” and said that “the world may have kept moving around us from that day, but we live in a place where everything has frozen”.
“When you lose your child, you do not simply lose a person, you do not simply lose a presence, you lose the strongest part of your soul, and yet you remain standing not because you are strong but because you have no other choice, and after a certain point you understand that you must become your child’s voice, the voice they did not live long enough to have,” Karystianou said.
She said that in the midst of absolute pain, another question is born, an unforgiving “why” – why it happened, how it happened and who was responsible.
Karystianou said that in the Tempi case, “the Greek politicians who bear criminal responsibility are not being investigated and are not being prosecuted, there is a cover-up so that the truth is excluded”.
She also alleged that the crash site “not only was not preserved, but with the guilt and complicity of prosecutors and investigating judges, police and the fire service, it was filled in and beneath the rubble the bones of our children were lost”.
Karystianou said that after all this, “there is no other solution than for another road to begin, the road of claiming not revenge but justice, because justice is not a personal obsession, it is not emotional release, it is a duty to the children who were lost, to the truth, to society, to the children who live and must be protected, a duty that belongs to everyone”.
She ended by saying she did not speak about pain “but from pain, and that is a big difference because when you speak from pain you do not look at it from the outside, you carry it, it has already changed you, you have not defeated it but you have learned to stand”.
Andriana Nicolaou, the mother of National Guardsman Thanasis Nicolaou, then addressed the event. Thanasis Nicolaou was found dead under a bridge in Alassa, Limassol, in September 2005. The original verdict was suicide, but 20 years later, a death inquiry found he had been killed.
Nicolaou said that “it was not enough that they killed my child, they also did everything to hide the truth. My Thanasis was not a case, nor a file for them to close, he was the child I held in my arms, the child I gave birth to and raised with affection, love and protection in a foreign country, Australia”.
She said that from the moment she saw her son dead beneath the large bridge, “I lost the ground beneath my feet and a nightmare began that has never ended, a nightmare full of pain but also anger and disappointment because instead of justice I found silence, instead of answers I was told I had to accept it, instead of support I met mockery and closed doors, and the worst of all was the attempt at a cover-up”.
Nicolaou said that “every year that passes without justice is a second murder and every delay is a wound that opens again and bleeds, every lie becomes a double-edged knife in a mother’s heart, and then I ask myself what sort of society we live in”.
She said her struggle was not only for her son but for all children, for justice, democracy and the dignity of the country, because when there is a cover-up, it is not only the family that is hurt but public trust in institutions as well.
According to Nicolaou, “we will not forget the crime that was covered up from the first 10 minutes at the scene by those responsible and, as a result, by officials of the Law Office who until recently refused to bring criminal prosecutions against the people identified by the criminal investigators they themselves had appointed”.
She added that her disappointment remained deep because “after 20 years of struggle and the exhumation of the remains and the scientific tests and court rulings that Thanasis was murdered by strangulation, we continue to climb our Golgotha”.
In her closing remarks, Nicolaou said that for Thanasis, “it was not only criminal negligence on the part of army officers who did not protect him from the drug users and troublemakers in the unit where he served, despite repeated requests. It was his premeditated murder immediately after the complaints he made, after which he was found dead and remains without justice”.
In her own address, Hiba Wisia of Palestine said that despite all the hardships, “we continue to endure and care for our children as long as thyme and olive trees continue to grow in our gardens”.
She said the real problem was the occupation, “an occupation that kills our children and destroys their hospitals and schools”, adding that, as she put it, 620,000 pupils in Gaza had been deprived of education for a third straight year and that 20,000 children had been killed over the past two years by occupying forces.
Wisia said that “our problem is an occupation that does not recognise a child’s right to life”, adding that more than one Israeli official had described children as animals and that children had been subjected to severe abuse.
She concluded by saying that if someone asked Palestinian children about their hopes and dreams for the future, the answers would be shocking, “because these children say they do not dream and do not think about the future because the occupation will not let them live long enough to grow up”.
Olena Varenik Neokleous said motherhood is the beginning of life and a source of love, strength and constant care. She said that across the world, regardless of language or culture, a mother is the first person to teach kindness, trust and humanity.
She said she was present at the event “for those mothers who live with deep pain, for the mothers who lost their children, for the mothers who live in anguish for their loved ones”.
Neokleous said the pain of losing a child unites hearts regardless of country or language because for a mother every child is a whole world, and that is why, she said, there are no foreign children.
Referring to her place of origin, Donetsk, she said that as a mother, she saw the pain suffered by families and mothers in both Russia and Ukraine as a result of intervention by third countries, with what she described as fraternal peoples bearing the consequences.
“That is why we want this bloodshed to stop and peace to come, because loss and pain do not take sides and mothers suffer everywhere,” Neokleous said, closing her remarks and the interventions at the event.
The event was moderated by actress and mental health adviser Maria Ioannou, who said at the start that it was “an initiative for dialogue, awareness and human connection that gives space to the voice of mothers beyond borders, political differences and different experiences of loss”.
She added that “the aim is to highlight the need for the protection of life, accountability and collective responsibility”.
A minute’s silence was held during the event in memory of children who were “lost” in armed conflicts and in tragedies linked to state and or social indifference.