Iakovos Christodoulides

He was born in the village of Pano Arodes¹, in the district of Paphos, in 1939.

He was killed by the British on September 15, 1958, in his village.

Iakovos Christodoulidis graduated from the primary school of Arodes and was a senior at the Paphos High School. He belonged to the EOKA groups active both in his school and in his village.

His death is related to the tragic events that followed an EOKA attack against British soldiers on September 12, 1958 in the village of Yiolou², Paphos district. During that attack one English soldier was killed and two others were wounded. The soldiers who arrived shortly, attacked the inhabitants of five villages in the surrounding area. They wounded many, struck women and children and the elderly indiscriminately with the butts of their weapons, and committed sacrileges and other perversions, also rushing into houses during the night.

In the midst of that effervescence, soldiers also rushed to the house of Charalambos Kalaitzis in the village of Kathikas. Enraged, he charged at them, killing three, before being shot by the others. At his funeral, where the people gathered by the thousands, Iakovos dared to deliver the eulogy and extol the hero’s sacrifice.

The soldiers overseeing the funeral flagged him down and later followed him into the crowd. In the meantime, English soldiers took up positions on the heights and at all the exits of the village towards Arodes, Stroumbi and Pegeia. When the inhabitants of Arodes, all together, for safety purposes, took the road to the village on foot, the soldiers stopped them and started beating them. There they isolated Iakovos and killed him by shooting him.

During his funeral, in Arodes, the soldiers fired again, from which one person was wounded.

With such cowardly acts, the English tried to bend the inflexible spirit of the youth and the people for freedom.