Morphou’s Greek Cypriot mayor-in-exile Victor Hadjiavraam on Tuesday said he felt “obliged to express my deepest indignation” at the government’s decision to build the new road connecting Nicosia and the Troodos mountains to run south of the villages of Akaki, Peristerona and Astromeritis.

He said the government had “abandoned” a planned “northern route” for the road, for which construction began in 1973, and which would, if completed, run towards Deneia, before running between Akaki and Avlona, north of Peristerona, and between Astromeritis and Zodeia, near Morphou itself.

Such a road would run through what is now the buffer zone.

“This choice is not just wrong, it is unacceptable, and it opens the way to a slippery slope, politically and nationally. It sends the wrong message – that we have accepted the status quo of the occupation, that we have forgotten Morphou and abandoned the fight for our return,” he said.

He added that the northern route is “not just a route”, but “a road which passes through Morphou, through the history and the fight of the people who remain refugees in their homeland”.

“Its abandonment is not just a technical decision, it is a political act with serious consequences. It is also particularly worrying that the new plan leaves out the villages of Astromeritis, Akaki, and Peristerona – villages which have stood for decades as sleepless guards of the Green Line and throughout history supported the fight for our return to Morphou,” he said.

He added that it is “unthinkable” that those villages have been “ignored today in national planning and excluded from this place’s development plans”.

“I call on the government, even at the last minute, to reconsider. I call on them to stop work on the southern route and return to the original design, which vindicates history, respects our communities, and sends the right political message: that Morphou has not been forgotten; that the return has not been abandoned; that we do not accept partition,” he said.

“I will not remain silent in the face of this development. I will not allow Morphou to be erased from the maps of the future. I will not accept any act which undermines the inalienable right of return. Morphou lives, and we will return.”