London’s Imperial War Museum hosted a six-month exhibition on the struggle for independence in Cyprus, Malaya and Kenya from October 2025 to March 2026, presenting the EOKA fighters not as terrorists but as anticolonial fighters, according to an account by members of the Cypriot artistic group Mousikoi Sinodipori who visited the exhibition.
Titled “Emergency Exits: The fight for independence in Malaya, Kenya & Cyprus,” the exhibition ran from 17 October 2025 to 29 March 2026. In the section devoted to Cyprus, exhibits included photographs, historical documents, testimonies from fighters, flags, weapons, and batons. The exhibition’s audiovisual material acknowledged British measures imposed during the struggle, among them house arrests, detentions, torture, and death sentences. The nine Cypriot fighters executed by hanging were referenced, though the account notes the treatment of this aspect was brief.
The exhibition’s audiovisual material also showed that the British encouraged tensions between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, deepening the communal divide between the majority and minority communities, according to the account. Among the exhibits was a partial quote from a British Colonial Secretary in 1954, displayed as part of the exhibition’s historical record: “there are certain territories in the Commonwealth which, owing to their particular circumstances, can never expect to be fully independent.”
A film shown within the exhibition included a note from the curators stating that “Cypriots did not hate the British but fought for their right to live free in their homeland.” The exhibition presented the survivors and descendants of fighters in all three countries as having been vindicated, with the curatorial framing offering what the account’s authors describe as an implicit acknowledgement by the former colonial power of the justice of their cause.
The final room of the exhibition was devoted to Grigoris Afxentiou, the EOKA fighter whom the British had described as a terrorist. The room featured a photograph of members of Mousikoi Sinodipori performing the ZIDROS hymn, written in Greek, and a depiction of the statue of Afxentiou at Machairas Monastery. Researcher Elena Kyprianou presented Afxentiou’s story as part of the group’s contribution to the exhibition.
The exhibition attracted hundreds of school groups from across England, as well as university students and general visitors. During the visit by the Mousikoi Sinodipori delegation, children asked questions about the EOKA struggle, with particular interest in the hangings. Discussions with historians were also organised during the exhibition’s run, with their proposals on the historical period presented as part of the programme.
