By Marios Leonida Evriviades
What happened to Cyprus in the early hours of March 25
and in the lead up meeting of March 15 in Brussels, the headquarters of
the European Union, was qualitatively no different than what happened to
Czechoslovakia on September 29 1938 in Munich of Nazi-controlled
Germany.
In both cases a small independent, sovereign state was
bullied into accepting a diktat – in the case of Czechoslovakia the loss
of about a third of its territory to Nazi Germany. And in the case of
Cyprus the virtual destruction of its economy for the benefit of the
German dominated eurozone.
In both cases Western Governments, democratic
governments it should be emphasized, did not only stand by. They
actually cheered the results and praised the bully-in-chief.
The most important European democracies of 1938, England
and France, welcomed the Munich abomination in spite of their treaty
obligations and moral commitments to stand by Czechoslovakia against
the Nazis. The leaders of England and France reported triumphantly back
home that what transpired in Munich preserved peace and stability on the
European continent. This is precisely what the sixteen members of the
Eurogroup said of the Cyprus diktat– that it preserved stability in
the eurozone.
Don’t take the word of official Cyprus about the
bullying tactics of the German-dominated Eurogroup, namely that Cyprus
was forced to capitulate at gunpoint by its partners. Here is how the
Finance Minister of Malta, Edward Scicluna, a participant in the 15
March Eurogroup lead up meeting described, in the Times of Malta on
March 19, the bullying that transpired: “All this was ‘agreed’ to by the
Cypriot government representative who, with a pistol to the head, was
naturally unusually co-operative. But it took 10 long hours before
the Cypriot minister’s body and soul became exhausted enough for him to
assent to the accord. As soon as that happened [the German] Schauble
demanded that all wire transfers to and from Cyprus banks would cease
forthwith.”
This is what passes for EU solidarity these days.
As a result the Cypriot economy, that topped the
performance of the nine other candidates for EU membership in 2004 and
performed on par or even better than most other European economies
until the global crisis of 2008, now lies prostrate.
Except for the loss of life in the 1974 brutal military
invasion of Cyprus by Turkey – when 1% of the Cypriot population was
slaughtered by a NATO army- what the Cypriots are now going through is
worse. Then, the Turkish army seized about a third of Cypriot territory,
two-thirds of its wealth and ethnically cleansed the indigenous
population of the conquered territory. But Cypriot resilience prevailed
and in five years the lost wealth was regained.
This time however the Eurogroup’s decisions injected a
cancerous cell in every Cypriot household. You can certainly fight
cancer to a degree. But you can surely suffer for the rest of your life
or die from it as well.
The Eurogroup has subjected Cypriots tο a double
economic abomination. It ordered part of their savings confiscated and
the rest frozen. In true Orwellian doublespeak this has been called a
“tax” on savings, or a “haircut”. It was in fact outright robbery.
Thievery is also “freezing” a person’s deposits and denying him/ her the
right to do whatever the heck he wants with them. They did that too.
The inane bullies of Brussels had to have a good
sounding excuse for their theft. So, they arbitrarily decided that the
savings of Cypriots were ‘mafia’ money, stolen money from someone,
somewhere. Perhaps some hard working Russians. So they decided to
punish the Cypriot ‘sinners’ by stealing their savings themselves. Is
this the latest version of the “protestant ethnic” up in the European
north?
The world does have a short memory. But some people do
remember. Or read history. The outright confiscation of private property
in the western world occurred twice before. In Nazi-Germany against
German-Jews and other “ sub-humans ”. And in Nazi-sympathizing Turkey
which in 1942 enacted legislation, the infamous Varlik Vergisi or
“wealth tax”, enabling the Turkish state to confiscate the properties
of Turkish citizens- Greeks, Armenians and Jews and sending those who
could not pay to “exile” in desert Anatolia from which most did not
return.
The EU, obsequious to a resurgent Germany, is now acting
as the enabler of econocide (destruction of an economy) and
consequently of cratocide ( destruction of a state) against the Republic
of Cyprus—one of its smallest members.
Shame on the spineless, sinister and self-serving EU.
And twice shame on the rest of the hypocritical Europeans who stand by
and watch another destructive bullying of a defenceless state in
their midst.
Marios Leonida Evriviades is professor of international relations at Panteion university in Athens
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