Today (November 23, 2020) marks 40 years since the murder of the Cypriot student in Athens, Iakovos Koumis. Koumis was unnecessarily beaten by MAT forces on November 16, in the aftermath of an episodic march for the Polytechnic anniversary, he expired a week later.
Biographical data
Iakovos Koumis was born in Sotira, Famagusta, on October 17, 1956. His parents were Ioannis A. Koumis and Eleni Symeou Papacharalambous. He had three brothers: Andreas, Simos and Antonis. He attended the Primary School of his community and then the Technical School of Famagusta. He then served his military service in the Expeditionary Forces. His dream was to study law in Athens. Therefore, after his military service and in parallel with his work at the Larnaca refineries, he attended the Nicosia Night High School.
From a young age he proved to be quite active and aware of the importance of the local community, the preservation of tradition and cultural upgrading: He participated in a dance group, pioneered the founding of the Larnaca Film Club and tried to formulate views on that tourism development (in the way it was evolving) would be detrimental to social cohesion. He also wanted to study the poets, women singers and dialects of the area.
In 1980 he married Maria Kaikki and in the autumn of the same year they left for Athens, after Koumis finally managed to secure a place at the Law School of the University of Athens.
Installation and activation in Athens
After the Turkish invasion of 1974, small groups of Cypriot students were formed in Athens and Thessaloniki, alongside the group formed around the "Oktovriana" bookstore in Nicosia. These groups, influenced by the theoretical approaches of the historian Nikos Psyroukis, tried to combine Marxist theories with the demand of Self-Determination - Union. Koumis was one of the pioneers of these movements.
The family / social environment in which he grew up, in a period of intense national upheaval (in the midst of the EOKA struggle and the turbulent first post-independence period) and his own spiritual pursuits in the Left, formed a peculiar type of thinker of the period. His brother, Andreas Koumis, claimed that what "shook" Iakovos politically was the coup d'etat of 1974, "which effectively used and betrayed the unification of the island and saw its vision lost." He also considered it crucial that he served in the Paratroopers, at a time when coup participants and warriors were still serving during the invasion. The latter narrated the tragedy of the time, as one day they fought against Cypriots and the next against Turks.
Under these circumstances, Koumis settled in Athens with his wife, was active in the aforementioned groups of Cypriot students and tried to organize his daily life. The difficulties faced by the couple in the beginning were many. Until they slept in a borrowed bed. The fatal breakfast, in fact, they had managed to secure a used refrigerator for their apartment in Sepolia.
The fatal course
The course for the anniversary of the Polytechnic in 1980 was expected to be dynamic and decadent. In October of the same year, the government of Georgios Rallis reinstated the country in the military wing of NATO, from which it had withdrawn in August 1974. This move provoked strong reactions. Therefore, in November the climate was electrifying. Therefore, in order to avoid the expansion of the anti-American menu of the protesters during the march of the Polytechnic, the Greek Government banned the end of the demonstration at the US Embassy. When a group of demonstrators tried to break the cordon of police forces and proceed to the American Embassy, given rise to security forces rampage against the crowd. Clashes were widespread, with more than 100 people injured.
Iakovos and Maria participated in the march, without joining any group (block). Around 21:00, Maria felt unwell and returned home, while Iakovos stayed and watched the procession. Half an hour later, the police forces began to attack. In the meantime, Koumis had headed to the area of Omonia and called his wife to inform her that he was preparing to return home. He then headed to Syntagma (where clashes were taking place) and sat across from the "Papaspyrou" patisserie, waiting for an opportunity to leave. Around 22:30 - 22:50 a team of MAT (consisting of about thirty people) appeared and attacked Koumi, hitting him and crushing his head with a globe. Bloodied, he headed to a nearby cafeteria, leaned against the window, but the owner did not allow him to enter until after the intervention of his journalist. Radical, Aretis Athanassiou.
During his transport by ambulance, Koumis lost consciousness, while at the People's Hospital he was found to be clinically dead. He died a week later, on November 23, 1980. The Italian medical examiner summoned by the family for the autopsy noted that Koumis had received sixteen blows from a globe, one of which had exploded in his brain. On the other hand, the state medical examiner recorded pulmonary edema as the cause of death.
The murder of Iakovos Koumis (and the worker Stamatina Kanellopoulou that happened on the same day) provoked the reaction of the representatives of the Greek parliamentary parties. Andreas Papandreou (PASOK), Charilaos Florakis (KKE), Leonidas Kyrkos and Babis Drakopoulos (KKE Esoterikou) and Ioannis Zigdis (EDIK) made condemnatory statements for the Government. On the contrary, Prime Minister George Rallis wrote cynically: "Or no one can claim to repel such attacks with simple recommendations. "And the Archangel Michael", I stressed in Parliament, "he was holding a sword in his hands to defend himself and not flowers".
The body in Cyprus
The body of Iakovos Koumis was transported to Cyprus at midnight on November 26-27, 1980 and was picked up by his competitors at Larnaca airport. He was transferred to the church of Panagia Faneromeni in Nicosia, where a trishagio was performed. A procession led by the Greek flag followed. The march ended at the Greek Embassy, where a protest resolution was served. His body was then transported to the Savior. His brother, Andreas, remembers that the church in which he was buried (Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior) was full of people, as were the square and the surrounding streets, to such an extent that people were forced to climb even to the roof of the church. to watch. He was buried in the cemetery next to the specific temple, but in November 2017, due to archeological works, his bones were recovered, which were transferred to the new cemetery of Sotira.
The tragedy of the moments was vividly highlighted by the philologist and friend of Koumi, Savvas Pavlou: "I want you to understand the pain and the question of his family and his village, because everyone was United, deeply Unionist. Iakovos was buried with the Greek flag, the village was Greek-centered with struggles and mother Greece sent them back a dead child who was killed by her. Their question was shocking, because Greece was sending back a dead child. At that time of the funeral, the tragic feeling that his family and the community had was that "we are Greeks, we are sending a child of our own to Greece and Greece is returning him dead".
The poet Iakovos Koumis
In the short period of his life, Iakovos Koumis managed to leave his mark in post-war Cypriot poetry. His poems were included in Anthology of contemporary Cypriot poetry by Lefkios Zafiriou and Louka Axelou (published by Stochastis, 1985). He spoke of love with lyrical lyrics:
The sweetness of our love
how to sing it?
The sweetness of my love,
how to send it tell me.
while through poetry he also expressed his social and national concerns:
We stopped looking
the blue color of the sea,
we look lose the earth
looking for a little red
to paint our white flag.
We forgot how red
the sun brings it
passing through the sea.
Unjustified
The murderers of Iakovos Koumis went unpunished. The political unrest in Greece in the 1980s allowed the issue to be briefly silenced. At the same time, the fact that the Cypriot student was not part of a party group, but instead participated in marginal student groups, helped not to put any pressure on the subsequent Greek Governments to investigate the issue and take responsibility.
However, as a product of time, his work and his quality as a thinker and poet emerged, with the result that, gradually, he was consciously established in the proper dimensions. In 2012, on the initiative of the Municipality of Sotira, the first literary memorial service for the murdered poet was organized. In the following years, his associates honored him by posting a photo of him at the local City Hall, while an intention was expressed to give his name to a street in the area. . Today, the name of the student who loved and fought for his province, man and freedom, before writing prophetically and tragically, becomes more and more known:
"Your blue figure with tyrants…
I look for a drop of freedom in your footsteps
And you denied me for your interests ".
The photos were provided by the Andrea Koumi family. The recorded testimonies are based on material collected in the framework of a study, in the postgraduate program of history of the Department of History and Archeology of the University of Cyprus.