By ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ (GREEK) TÜRKÇE (TURKISH)
On this day, July 12, 2005, the young Australian expatriate Thanasis Nicolaou joined the National Guard – without being under any obligation to do so – purely out of a sense of duty to serve his country. On September 29, he was found dead under a bridge. They declared it a suicide and swiftly closed the case.
For 18 years, authorities, governments, the state and their little parrots mocked Thanasis’ mother, Andriana, to her face, for never believing the official report and continuing her unequal and lonely struggle for vindication against the most brutal establishment that a person has ever faced single-handedly: the callous Cypriot state that not only kills the very citizens it is supposed to protect but also continues to protect murderers and abettors. Thanasis’ family was vindicated when the exhumation and a new autopsy revealed the crime that had been visible to the authorities from the beginning, but they made sure to methodically cover it up while dismissing anyone who claimed otherwise as insane, paranoid or an enemy of the state. Count how many Presidents, Ministers of Justice, Attorney Generals and Police Chiefs have come and gone over these 18 years and what they did about the case. Absolutely nothing. They threw their hands up and told her “there is nothing reproachable, everything was done right, your son couldn’t handle the [military] service and killed himself”. All of them guilty, some less, some more, of indifference, callousness, incompetence and some perhaps even of expediency. And let the [political] party dogs everywhere bark that “we had nothing to do with it”, while always pointing the finger at others. Ignore them. Besides, history has already done so.
With the current Attorney General putting a definitive end to the investigations and President Christodoulides effectively offering blood money to cover the costs of private criminal cases to be filed by the victim’s family. The state has washed its hands, shoved the rubbish under the mat and is proud of the fact that it has cleaned up.
With his murder and the events that followed, Thanasis ceased to be the child of his parents alone. He became the child of all of us. Or at least he could have been. The fact that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, saw something he shouldn’t have seen and entrusted it to the wrong people, thus sealing his fate, could happen to any of us. It could have been the frozen, lifeless body of your own child on the counter of the “state pathologist” who ruled it a suicide before he had a chance to examine it. It could have been YOU walking around all those years with your face sullen and scarred from the pain and suffering, your eyes hard with rage over the loss and derision and with the passion for vindication being the only motivation to get out of bed in the morning, the only reason to keep breathing. Haunting the sidewalk outside the Legal Services or the President’s office like a black-clad figure in a gothic novel, holding placards with gruesome photos of the corpse of YOUR OWN child. And having some “pity party” tell you to cover them up or leave because you’re scaring their children. And then thinking that at least theirs are still alive.
That’s why it is imperative that you be outside the Legal Service today at 6.30pm. Don’t do it for Thanasis or Andriana. Do it for your own child, brother, sister, friend, loved one that you can’t bear to lose. And most importantly, show them you’re there. In the face of injustice, nonexistence, incompetence, callousness, unworthiness, corruption, indifference, criminal negligence. Because the case of Thanasis Nicolaou encapsulates all the pathologies of a state that, short of killing its own children, certainly does not do its best to protect them.
Source: DEVIL’S ADVOCATE: WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR (FOR) THANASIS?
