Historic Service Held At Sumela

Patriarch Vartholomaios leads yesterday’s service at the Sumela Monastery in Trabzon, Turkey. The Turkish government has allowed religious worship to take place there once a year in slow easing of restrictions on religious expression. Until now, the monastery, a site of holy significance to Black Sea Greeks, has been operated as a museum.
The first service to take place in 88 years at the Sumela Monastery in northeast Turkey was described yesterday as a "historic and important" event by Premier George Papandreou, who watched Patriarch Vartholomaios preach to some 1,500 pilgrims, many from Greece and Russia.
"After 88 years, the tears of the Virgin Mary have stopped flowing," said Vartholomaios, the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, at the 4th-century monastery, built into a sheer cliff in the Trabzon area of Turkey, where tens of thousands of Black Sea, or Pontian, Greeks once lived.

The last service held at the monastery was in 1922, before the last of the Greeks fled the region following the First World War and the conflict between Greece and Turkey. Greece estimates that 350,000 Pontians were killed when they were forced out by the Turks, in what Athens describes as a genocide.
For the first time since then, the Turkish government, which is trying to allow greater religious and ethnic freedom in the country as it attempts to gain entry to the European Union, gave official permission for Vartholomaios to hold a service at Sumela to mark the ascension of Jesus’s mother, Mary, to heaven.
The Patriarch said the event had great symbolism. "This monastery is the bequest of a civilization that had a culture of living together," he said. "Let us ensure this bequest survives so the pain does not reoccur."
The Greeks admitted to the service seemed greatly moved. "For us, the Virgin of Sumela is more important than our mother," said Charalambos Zigas, 51. "Being apart from this place feels like being Odysseus: always searching for your home," Evropi Papadopoulou, 45, told Reuters.
KATHIMERINI - AUGUST 16 2010

Futile Blame Game over Refugees Properties

LAST WEEK’S decision of the European Court of Human Rights continues to be the main issue of public debate, which is no bad thing. After all, this was a wake-up call for all Greek Cypriots who believed that their property rights would be unaffected by the passage of time and bought the politicians’ myth that a settlement was not a matter of urgency.
Unfortunately, the debate has avoided the main point of the ECHR decision, degenerating instead into a blame game. Some have blamed the decision on the lawyer/politicians who encouraged refugees to file over a thousand recourses to the European Court and thus prompting it to propose the setting up of the Immovable Property Commission (IPC) in the north. Others put the responsibility on the refugees (some 400) who applied to the IPC, thus giving it legitimacy. The hard-line politicians, who advocated that the Cyprus problem could be solved in the courts, blamed the judges of the ECHR for taking a politically expedient decision.
In a way everyone was correct. The ECHR wanted to find a way to dismiss the individual property claims of refugees after it was inundated with applications and it set up the IPC. It declared it an acceptable domestic remedy in order to block the submission of more applications. Refugees gave legitimacy to the Commission by applying for compensation, but they had no other choice under the Papadopoulos government which had no interest in pursuing a settlement; they saw the commission as their only hope of getting some compensation for their properties.
And the judges took a political decision, as many lawyer claimed, because they felt the ECHR was being abused by Greek Cypriots. They felt Greek Cypriot property claims could be settled by a political solution to the Cyprus problem, a view endorsed by President Christofias. In short, a combination of factors contributed to the decision released by the Court eight days ago.
The blame-game everyone has been engaging in for the last week is futile, but for the hard-line politicians and their patron the Church, it is preferable than having to deal with the hard choices presented to us by the decision. We either work for a settlement which would not guarantee the return of all the refugees to their homes but would ensure they would be compensated for their properties, or we surrender the occupied part of Cyprus to Turkey and hope that a maximum number of refugees would receive some compensation from the IPC. The ECHR has even placed a December 2011 deadline on applying for compensation. After this, refugees would have no legal claim to their properties in the north.
This is what our wise politicians should be discussing instead of looking for scapegoats to blame the consequences of their short-sighted policies.

Cyprus Mail - March 13, 2010

by Nikos Xydakis

A sense of gloom has descended upon us following the brief hiatus of the festive season, as retail markets contract and households feel increasingly constrained and frightened. This gloom, a prevailing and deep feeling of despondency, has now become a structural characteristic of society that first became apparent back in the summer of 2007.
The financial crisis, pressure from markets and threats of bankruptcy may well transform this despondency into defeatism. And defeatism leads to paralysis. The government, feeling the noose of the markets tightening around its neck and cracking under the pressure from its European partners, is incapable of producing any policy beyond the fiscal discipline measures that are dictated to it. And while trimming the deficit and reducing the debt are clearly issues of crucial importance, they are not the only ones.
The government should first of all be making every effort to fully understand public sentiment, make an accurate assessment of the present reality, safeguard social cohesion and ensure a just and viable plan for growth. Does the government have what it takes to do this?
Its stability plan is all about cutting costs and raising taxes, placating Brussels and appeasing the markets to improve its borrowing prospects. Where, though, is the plan for growth? Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? What does the average person have to expect after three more years of sacrifice? How will small-business owners, 50-year-olds who live in fear of unemployment and farmers who have been left to their own devices pick themselves up? Where will the hundreds of students currently at universities offering an education of questionable quality come into the productive equation? What is the strategy for tourism, agriculture, small and medium-sized enterprises and innovation?
Nothing is said about any of this. Nothing specific. All we get instead are vague announcements about green development on the one hand and, on the other, that all-time favorite, the diversion of the Acheloos River.