The Church of Cyprus is promoting what it supposedly wishes to prevent
To put things on a proper basis, I offer some sober observations in relation to the Easter message of the Archbishop of Cyprus, Georgios, in relation to what he said about "Muslim migrants deliberately channeled by Turkey in order to alter the demographic character of the unoccupied territory of Cyprus" and "their use as a fifth column in our interior, in case of armed conflict":
- "We are neither racist nor xenophobic," the Archbishop claimed. There is no interest in this. Whether the Archbishop is a racist is not a matter worthy of special investigation. It is irrelevant to the debate at stake. Racism is not a property of a soul or an attribute of a subject. Such an investigation would result in an unproductive detectivism, where one would be trying to substantiate something about the psyche of a person or group of people, which may forever remain a mystery. Just as we will not be able to substantiate whether the Archbishop genuinely believes in Christ and the resurrection, we will not be able to substantiate whether the Archbishop is or is not a racist. His discourse and the policies that are either directly proposed or implicitly entailed are racist, and therein lies the crux of the matter. Racism is a property of structures and tangible results; it is not a subjective intention or a private emotion or a psychological trait of a person.
- Most of the people who are now arriving from the occupied territories are of African descent. Most of them are Christians, not Muslims. This alone shows that the Church of Cyprus is out of touch with reality, and proves how unfounded its interpretation is. This does not mean that the Muslim migrants who are actually coming pose a danger or are part of Turkey's plan, or that if the proportions change and more Muslims start arriving this will confirm the interpretation of the Church of Cyprus.
- The Church of Cyprus claims to have a strong concern for the survival of the Greek Cypriot community and Greek culture. But any community that is concerned about its survival, the first thing it does is to take care of its unity. Whoever sows divisive speech, it is not unity that they care about, but rather the confrontation between those who support and those who oppose such discourse. Therefore, the Church's achievement, through the Archbishop's hate speech, is the production and reproduction of discord, rivalry, and resistance within the very Greek Cypriot community that it is supposedly striving to unite. No truce and no unity will be achieved on these terms.
- Anyone who is concerned about their own survival and trying to prevent migrants from organizing against them, should take care not to contribute or exert pressure that pushes these groups towards self-organization against them. The migrants in Cyprus do not have the organization that the Church of Cyprus implies they have, nor are they hostile to the Church. (On the contrary, many of them wish to participate in the church, which the attitude of the Church of Cyprus prevents.) It is the attitude held by the Church of Cyprus itself that makes such an organization desirable for the migrants themselves. The process of self-organization of the migrants will be mobilized neither through mysterious processes nor through conspiracies, but through the conflict which the Church of Cyprus itself is willingly or unwillingly promoting.
The article was originally published in Greek, in the Cypriot newspaper O Phileleftheros.