Secondary school students marched in Nicosia on Friday ahead of Sunday’s anniversary of the declaration of the ‘TRNC’ on 15 November 1983. They called for a solution to the Cyprus problem and the island’s reunification as a bizonal, bicommunal federation.
The march was organised by the Pancyprian Coordinating Committee of Students (PSEM). Students gathered at the wholesale market in Kaimakli and walked to the Mia Milia checkpoint, carrying Cypriot flags and chanting slogans in support of a federal solution and reunification. A university students’ union representative also urged President Nikos Christodoulides to work for a substantive resumption of talks.
PSEM’s president said the organisation had watched the stalemate in the negotiations since 2017 with concern, and that time left unused served only partition. The Greek Cypriot side must support the negotiating process on the basis of its long-standing positions and its commitments to the international community and the Turkish Cypriots, she said.
Recent meetings between the two communities and the United Nations appeared to show renewed movement on the Cyprus problem, rekindling hopes that negotiations would resume, she added. She called on both communities to return to the negotiating table seriously, with the sole aim of reaching a solution, and saluted the thousands of progressive Turkish Cypriots who had demonstrated in recent years against Turkey’s attempts to interfere in their community’s internal affairs and on the island in general.
She said PSEM was fighting for a solution based on international law and UN resolutions: a bizonal, bicommunal federation with political equality and a single sovereignty, international personality and citizenship. It was also fighting for the restoration of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all Cypriots, and for a demilitarised, sovereign Cyprus where Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots could live together freely, without guarantees, rights of intervention or imperialist interference. “Cyprus does not need armies, barbed wire and foreign guardians watching over us,” she said.
The events of 1974 continued to wound the Cypriot people as a whole, she said, and the dead, the missing and the refugees would not see justice while the occupation, and what she called the crimes of imperialists and nationalists in both communities, continued. As the voice of the future, students had a duty to stand against partition and fight for the peaceful coexistence of Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots, Armenians, Maronites and Latins. Anyone trying to undermine efforts towards a solution would find PSEM opposing them, and it would not let nationalism and chauvinism poison the minds of the younger generation, she said.
Students’ union calls on Christodoulides
Andreas Panagides, representing the Frederick University Students’ Union, said there needed to be a specific, clear plan and strategy aimed at liberation and reunification. His union saw the Cyprus problem as an international problem of invasion, occupation, settlement, foreign intervention and a blatant violation of the territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus, he said. Internally, it also involved normalising relations between the island’s two communities.
He said the union supported a bizonal, bicommunal federation with political equality as described in UN resolutions. This had been the Republic of Cyprus’s official position since the 1977-1979 agreements, he said, and it was the only realistic and viable solution.
Panagides urged the leaders of the two communities, particularly Christodoulides, “to set aside excuses” and focus on a substantive resumption of talks from where they had broken off, preserving what had already been agreed in negotiations.
