Giasoumis Chajitheodosiou

Born in the village of Achna¹, Famagusta district, in 1940.

Killed on August 2, 1958 in the Achna area, while laying a mine.

Giasoumis Chajitheodosiou finished his village's primary school and was a sixth-grade student at the Siakalli English School, later the Famagusta Commercial Lyceum, when he was killed.

He joined EOKA in 1957 in the Achna youth groups, from where he transferred to the Achna strike groups, shortly before his death.

The Turkish hostilities against the Greeks in the Famagusta area began on 10 July 1958, when a Greek was shot unsuccessfully by Turks. The following day, the Turks again shot and killed a Greek near the village of Sinta. After these incidents, EOKA set up an ambush the following day, 12 July 1958, on the road from Sinta to Kontea. EOKA attacks continued on 13 and 20 July 1958 and were repeated in August.

Because the Turkish attacks were directed against isolated farmers and shepherds in the area, any Turk moving into Greek villages was considered suspicious and was confronted by armed EOKA patrols. British soldiers accompanied the Turks in their looting, ostensibly for protection. Thus, EOKA began to use pressure and traction mines, which it placed on Greek properties in the villages of Lysi, Achna and Xylotymvou, which bordered the Turkish villages of Pergamos and Kouklia, to counter Anglo-Turkish attacks.

“During such a minelaying of the area by the EOKA groups of Achna and Xylotymvou²,” recounts their fellow fighter Chajitheodosiou Christodoulos Augustos, a wanted guerrilla and the person in charge of the mission, “one of our mines detonated, resulting in the death of Giasoumis Chajitheodosiou and the slight injury of some of our other fighters.”

In that operation, Chajitheodosiou Christodoulos Augustos was also seriously injured, losing half his hand.

Thousands of Greeks from the surrounding villages attended Giasoumis' funeral. His villagers flew the Greek flags at half-mast on all the houses in the village, welcomed his body on their knees and buried him with national marches.