By Michael Peters Kyriacou, President of the Cyprus Community of NSW
The idea of being forced out of your home, fleeing your family ancestral lands and sacred sites never to return is foreign to most Australians. This is not so in the Cyprus Community of NSW.
As a Community made up of refugees and their families, the 1974 Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus is still fresh in the minds of many.
Today, our Community is witnessing a new phenomenon, the passing of a generation of refugees.
Recently, Chrystalla Stasos, the mother of the well-known member of our Community Michael Stasos, passed leaving a legacy for our Community, her family and her ethnos.
Chrystalla was from Agios Ambrosios – a village located in the Kyrenia District of Cyprus, east of Kyrenia, occupied by Turkish troops since 1974.
The village is dedicated to Saint Ambrose and is well known for having the largest church on the island, now converted into a mosque.
Chrystalla left her home at the age of 18 in 1951. She embodied the typical Australian story.
At the time Chrystalla left her village it was effectively under British occupation and the struggle to liberate the island was to be long and difficult. But so was settling into a new land.
Chrystalla married Kyriacos (also from Agios Ambrosios) in 1952 and raised two children, Michael and Angelo.
What makes Chrystalla’s story so poignant is that she came to Sydney, Australia as an economic refugee and then in 1974 became a refugee, a displaced person never to return to her ancestral lands. She worked hard alongside her husband with a dream of returning to their land in Agios Ambrosios.
Although she did not witness the invasion and pillage of her village, the murder and suffering of her people, she lamented about her siblings’ struggles and opened her house in Australia for refuge.
Chrystalla, like thousands of refugee families, was robbed of her identity, her property, her history and the legacy of her ancestors.
Typical of her generation, Chrystalla’s devotion to family is legendary, promoting her culture, her identity and passing it on to her children and beyond was a major part of her character.
Like all our refugees, Chrystalla carried her ancestor’s hopes, memory, and the just cause of Cyprus alive.
Our Community is now going through a seismic demographic shift, literally a generation of refugees is disappearing, who never to have walked on their country, touch the sacred soil of their roots or pass on the story of 1974 to all of us.
Our refugees are passing, and so is our collective memory of occupation and a liberated Cyprus.
As a Community we owe it to people like Chrystalla to keep their memory of the events of 1974 alive and their dedication to the cause, their family, their Community and our ethnos.
The Community is in deep gratitude to all our refugee families for keeping their story and the struggle in the minds and hearts of all. We cannot let them down.
