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Ezekias Papaioannou

Ezekias Papaioannou (8 October 1908 – 10 April 1988) was General Secretary of the Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) from 1949 to 1988, succeeding Fifis Ioannou and preceding Dimitris Christofias.

Biography[]

Ezekias Papaioannou was born in Kellaki, Cyprus on 8 October 1908, and he worked as a miner in Skouriotissa and as a dockworker in Piraeus, Greece. He moved to London in the early 1930s, working with the Communist Party of Great Britain against different fascist factions, and he was jailed for three months because of his communist activities. Papaioannou later returned to Cyprus and became active in anti-imperialist groups, and he served in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and moved to London after he was wounded. Because of his old injuries and poor health, he unable to enlist during World War II, but he served in the London air defense during the war and was permanently recalled to Cyprus by AKEL in 1946. In 1949, he became AKEL's General Secretary, and he fought for the rights of workers against British colonialism. His party was banned from 1955 to 1959 during the Cyprus Emergency, and, while he was against the Zurich and London Agreement (which he saw as unworkable), he sought to combat far-right extremism on Cyprus and build better relations with the native Turks. He was elected to Parliament in 1960 and served until his death in 1988. He left all of his assets to the party on his death.

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