A protest for Gaza organised by the Cyprus Peace Council is currently in full swing at Eleftheria Square in Nicosia.
According to the organisers, the event includes a brief gathering and a march with the route Eleftheria Square – Ministry of Finance – PASYDY – Lord Byron Lights – EU House – and back to Eleftheria
The march is taking place “against the famine and genocide in Palestine,” with speakers expressing their support for Palestinians and demanding an “end to the genocide,” among other things.
“We do not have the right to be complacent or indifferent. As long as a genocide, a modern-day holocaust, is underway, and thousands of children, innocent people, the elderly, and the sick are dying from starvation and an artificial humanitarian crisis, we will be here,” stressed the President of the Cyprus Peace Council, Tasos Kosteas, in his address.
He noted that they are participating in this mobilisation along with many other peace-loving organisations from all over the world, sending a message of solidarity “to the exterminated Gaza.” “Along with the activists of the Sumud Flotilla, with vessels from 45 countries, a large anti-war alliance is being created and raising a shield of solidarity with Palestine,” he said.
“We will be here because Israel intends to exterminate the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank. We will be here as long as the thousands of lorries with humanitarian aid do not reach their destination. As long as children are murdered for a little flour. As long as Israel bombs hospitals, murders doctors, and destroys water tanks,” he added.
The Cyprus Peace Council and the other peace-loving organisations, as well as the majority of the Cypriot people, he stated, “are steadfastly committed to the cause of Peace—standing by the people of Palestine and every other people in distress.” We share their drama and injustice because we, too, in Cyprus, are experiencing occupation and violations of International Law, he said.
We will continue because we have a duty to future generations to ensure justice, truth, and peace prevail, he concluded.
Nikos Peristianis emphasised that what is happening in Palestine “is horrific—not only for the Palestinian people who endure destruction, pain, and death daily, but for all of us. For the very idea of our shared ‘humanity.’”
Today, he said, in Palestine, the principles of respect for state borders, non-interference in the internal affairs of other states, and the protection of human life, and the dignity of every person, regardless of race, gender, religion, or nationality, “are being trampled.”
He questioned, “How can a people with the historical memory of persecution, displacement, and extermination support—in such a large proportion—policies that constitute forms of collective punishment, exclusion, and expulsion?” If we accept the logic that the powerful can do whatever they want, he continued, “to bomb, to kill, to sow famine, and to exile—it is as if we are accepting that the global moral order, built after ‘Never Again,’ has already collapsed.”
Mr Peristianis stated that this regression, this relapse in values and ethics, does not only concern Israel. “It concerns all of us. Because if we do not defend the rights of Palestinians today, tomorrow there may be no more rights to defend,” he added.
Noting that peace is built on justice and not on the ruins of a people, Mr Peristianis declared, “we demand the dispatch of a peacekeeping force to ensure an end to the genocide, accountability for war crimes, the rebuilding of Gaza, and the prevalence of international law, not the law of the powerful.”
The Palestinian Haytham Alzeer questioned, “How many more deaths must we count before the Western ‘civilised’ governments are mobilised?” and added, “The words ‘mass extermination’ and ‘genocide’ sound harsh—but they are not harsher than their silence while our people are dying.”
“The state of Israel has become a killer state,” Mr Alzeer said, noting that, “with impunity and the full support of the powerful, it is feeding its expansionist policy on the lives of innocent people.” And yet, they should know, he continued, “no ‘Greater Israel’ will be built on the ruins of Palestinian homes and hearts.”
Here in Cyprus, he said, “your solidarity gives us strength. The Cypriot people know what occupation, the destruction of places and people, means. Your support is a light in our darkness. We thank you deeply for not leaving our people alone.”
Tonight, from Cyprus to Palestine, “we send a message to the whole world: We will not be silenced. We will not be broken. We will not allow the genocide to pass,” he said.
In his message, Takis Hadjidemetriou stated that he joins his voice with the participants of the march, “against the barbarism, against the war crime that is happening next to us with the famine, which has been so inhumanely imposed on the people of Gaza.”
He also stated that there are many governments “that tolerate the racist behaviour of the Israeli government, and it is a misfortune that the Cypriot government is among them, a shareholder in the silencing of the greatest crime of the 21st century.” He noted that the event is aligned “with all the peoples who, in spite of the opportunism of their governments, express their solidarity with the Palestinians, on land with demonstrations and on the sea with the ships to Gaza.” We also offer our support to the people of Israel who are demonstrating against the war and who condemn the genocide, his message stated.
In her own message, Marina Michaelidou-Kadi stated that “silence is not an option,” and that the conscience of humanity is being judged by what is happening in Gaza today. It is not possible to talk about human rights, she noted, “but to turn our heads away from a famine that condemns the most vulnerable groups of the population to a slow and agonizing death.” It is not possible to talk about peace, she added, “but to close our eyes—for our own supposed interests—in the face of a genocide.”
As a mother, as a children’s literature writer, “and as a person who respects her principles,” she stated, “I will continue to stand by the civilian population of Palestine and by every civilian population that is bleeding.” The defence of peace, Ms Michaelidou-Kadi stated, is above any political ideology, adding that it is the thread that unites the solidarity movements and the voices of people who resist, in every corner of the world, “who are steadily increasing and getting stronger.”
