Near the Androni district, Ypsipyli sees a crowd gathered around an imposing monument. Wreaths, wreath-laying, prayers, speeches, and two flags, one Greek and one Cypriot. What’s going on? Curious to know, she mixes in with the people honoring the fighters of the Cypriot liberation struggle.
The monument in honour of the heroes of EOKA was erected thanks to a fundraising campaign organised by ardent supporter of the unionist struggle and vice-president of the Panhellenic Committee for Cyprus Self-Determination, Archbishop Dionysios of Lemnos. It was inaugurated on 30 August 1958 with the Prelate of Cyprus Makarios and his fellow exiled priest Papastavros Papagathangelou present. Lemnians flooded Myrina to see the representatives of the struggling Cypriot Hellenism, with slogans supporting Cyprus, EOKA and union with Greece. Deeply moving commemorative events still take place today around the monument, in the context of visits by the Associations of Fighters, Political Convicts and Prisoners of the EOKA Struggle 1955-59. In 1994, within the framework of the Thrace-Aegean-Cyprus programme, the (then) Municipality of Myrina established a twin city relationship with the Cypriot Municipality of Lyssis, and the name of the community was given to a street in the capital of Lemnos.
