The tragedy that shaped one of Cyprus’ newest MPs

From courtroom battles to parliament, Diana Constantinides on what drives her mission to make a differenceIt takes a moment to even realise it’s her, this slim young woman in a light-pink T-shirt, dwarfed by the gaudy tower of Ayia Napa marina. She looks like she’s just come from the beach (as indeed she has). She doesn’t really look like an MP – albeit from the freshest, least stuffy party, Fidias Panayiotou’s Direct Democracy. Coffee Berry is too noisy so we head to the air-conditioned tower, pretending to be waiting for the gym to get past security. It all feels a bit disorganised. Then we get to talking, however, and Diana Constantinides is impressive indeed – talking of ideals and accomplishments, and a life marked by tragedy. Her English is superb, after all it’s been her work language for the past 10 years, as a barrister in London (she’s with 33 Bedford Row) specialising in human rights and international criminal law. Her Greek, I assume, is very good too, after all she started out here – not quite Napa, where she grew up, but a lawyer in Paralimni, just down the road – and of course it’ll be her work language for the next five years (at least), having won a seat in May’s elections. The segue into politics wasn’t accidental. “In 2016, before we got married with my husband, we made this vision board, where you sit down and write ‘What is it that you want?’, ‘What do you want to achieve in your life?’. On an individual basis, but also as a union together,” she tells me. “And at that point, in 2016, I did say that I would be getting into politics – and I think actually the year [on the board] was 2026! So it’s quite surreal sitting out here talking to you.” Diana with the other Direct Democracy MPs and party leader Fidias Panayiotou when they were officially announced There’s a certain type of person who makes a ‘vision board’ – taking their future by the scruff of the neck – and Diana is that type of person. So is her husband, a successful entrepreneur whose latest venture is a sports app called Actxion. He’s Portuguese, but grew up in Mozambique and endured that country’s civil war during his childhood – a traumatic event for a child and indeed, she says, the way he’s handled that trauma is “something I really admire” about him. Sounds like it rhymes with something in her own childhood, I suggest, not wanting to ask directly. “Indeed, yes,” she replies briskly. She gives it a beat, then begins: “So, in 1993, my mother was murdered…” Diana’s mother was Christine Constantinides, a Swedish housewife raped and murdered by Antonis Prokopiou Kitas, nicknamed Al Capone. Her body was found in Kotsiatis landfill months later, by which time Kitas – who’s still in prison, serving two life sentences – had also murdered another woman, Romanian dancer Oxana Lisna. Diana as a baby with her mother Christine, who was murdered when she was five It’s among the most notorious cases in Cyprus legal history, in fact it was part of the syllabus when Diana was studying to be a lawyer – though she herself was “kindly exempted” from having to study it, she notes wryly. She was five years old when it happened (she turned 38 last month). How much was she told, at that age? “Um… Let’s put it this way, my childhood was interrupted abruptly. And there was a clear realisation as to what was happening. “I did understand that my mother was – was dead. I did realise something wasn’t right. I may not have known the details of it, which was something that unravelled throughout my childhood – and every detail that unravelled was taking away part of my existence. “It took a lot of effort and work in my life to restore that part of myself – but never quite so successfully that I am completely restored, unfortunately. So there’s always going to be a part of me that’s dedicated to my mum’s memory. “That emptiness I feel inside me, it will never be completed – by no person, and no-one in this world. It is the mother’s love.” There was counselling, even in the 90s, but the sessions didn’t really help. “What I did find helpful was reading a lot. It was my space to process, by reading things.” From about eight years old she was deep into books, though the reading list sounds a bit advanced: Greek mythology, German psychoanalysis, yoga, Buddhism, The Art of War. (That one may have come later, she admits.) So essentially she withdrew from the world? “I think someone once described me as ‘being there, but not quite being there’… So my mind was always travelling into processing, and dealing with things. And nothing I did was quite enough.” Her life as a lawyer in London means she has seen far more than the Facebook haters know Her dad – she adores him – helped tremendously. Summers in the Swedish countryside were also therapeutic. But the “curse”, as she puts it, persists to this day – that sense of constantly trying, yet feeling it’s never enough. You might say she’s chasing a phantom, unconsciously trying to restore that empty part of her, the mother’s love she lost and can never regain. She keeps trying, though – and in fact that may be key, the way life has turned Diana into a dogged pursuer of causes, even quixotic ones. I ask if she ever fell into depression, during her various ups and downs – but she shakes her head. “Because I knew that my mother fought a lot – to stay alive – that sort of fire and resilience, I think, has been passed on by my mother to me,” she replies. “I don’t like to dwell on things. I like to stand up and keep moving forward. “If I can’t walk, I will crawl. If I can’t crawl, I will – y’know, move one finger. If I can’t move a finger, I will keep breathing. But no matter what, I will keep going forward, in any shape or form. And that really defines everything I do.” Being an international lawyer is quixotic right now. She’s involved in what her professional bio calls ‘the Darfur situation’, representing victims and appearing before the ICC (International Criminal Court) – but the ICC is being dismantled by the Trump administration after issuing warrants against Israeli politicians, and Gaza has exposed the system as a sham anyway. Isn’t it just the law of the jungle now? “When we see the darkness emerging, there always need to be people to stand up for the light,” she replies idealistically. “I mean that’s the problem now, there is impunity… So I think it’s important for, not just activists but also the legal community, to keep talking about it.” “It all comes down to those principal questions, such as ‘Who are we, and what do we do?’. And I think the question as to who we are – well, we’re humans, and ‘What do we do?’, we need to speak up for humanity. So that’s what we have to keep doing.” Direct Democracy is also quixotic, with its vision of an app where voters can directly express their ‘priorities’ – though of course it depends who you ask. Many in Cyprus seem determined to view it as a joke, a buffoonish project. She says she is not afraid of extreme sports Diana, who’s the party vice-president, has encountered pushback for a series of videos she posted highlighting the clothes she’s been wearing to the plenum – the tone of the criticism being that, like Fidias himself, she’s blurring the line between politician and social-media influencer. “I think some have missed the point,” she shrugs. For one thing, the clothes are sold by small local businesses, the idea being not a paid promotion (she buys everything herself) but a way of supporting those businesses. For another, “women in politics does not mean you’re dismissing the part of being a woman”. Besides, she has form when it comes to social-media primers. Her YouTube channel includes a video from seven years ago called ‘A day in the life of a human-rights lawyer’, sharing her trip to the ICC; it has almost 35,000 views. Politics is going to be a snake pit, for sure. “You’re not just uneducated, you’re dangerous too,” snarled a Facebook comment last week, after she posted about the need for a Truth Commission in Cyprus. Still, she’s unlikely to be fazed, having been a lawyer all her life – and a barrister since moving to London in 2015. The UK system is famously adversarial and requires quick thinking, barristers (who appear in court, unlike solicitors) often getting thrown in at the deep end. And there’s something else too. The only time Diana hesitates is when I ask if she’s faced sexual harassment in the profession. “Yes…” she replies after a long pause. She’s seen a lot, more than the Facebook haters know. She’s seen evil, the same malignant force that poisoned her childhood. Oddly, when I ask for an example, she mentions another child – a 12-year-old she represented three times, who already had a criminal record. The last of those times, the boy – faced with the threat of prison – looked up at the magistrates and, seemingly contrite, started crying. “And then he turns, he looks at me, he smiles, and wipes his tears,” she recalls, unable to forget that fiendish smile (revealed only to her) and the way that kid “really manipulated the courtroom”. That was the only case when she wondered if some people might just be born bad. Another good story is the one about getting locked in prison with a drug dealer – though what’s interesting isn’t just the story (the door was locked, the emergency button didn’t work; they stayed there for an hour, before the guards found them) but also her reply when I ask if she was scared, as a young woman in her 20s. “The thing is that when you go into the courtroom there should be no fear,” she replies. “Because I can sense fear, so I think other counsellors may detect it as well. So when I’m there, I don’t feel or share my fear. So I don’t think he felt that I was afraid.” Again and again, we come back to the same themes – all the lessons she learned as a lost, incomplete girl who had her mother torn away so violently. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Keep trying. Keep moving forward. Hide the fear. Face your demons. Diana has returned to Cyprus, where she lives with her husband and two daughters Life in Ayia Napa must be pleasant and relaxed, I venture. (They moved back a couple of years ago.) “I guess my lifestyle is never relaxed,” replies Diana. “I don’t like relaxed environments.” Well, any hobbies? “I like extreme sports… I’ve done bungee jumping, gliding, paragliding, parachuting, I’ve done scuba diving. I drive boats up to 15 metres, I’m licensed.” Parachuting was okay but she liked gliding more, especially doing the loop up in the air. “My instructor was like, ‘Are you ready for the acrobatics?’. I said, ‘I’m more than ready!’.” Does she not feel fear? Or does she like the fear? “I like fear,” she replies instantly. “But I’m not scared of extreme sports,” she adds, “I really enjoy them. I think now I want to get my licence for a motorbike – a big motorbike.” She does still read, by the way: every morning, even if it’s just a few pages, currently Kipling’s The Jungle Book. (Before that it was Gandhi’s autobiography.) And of course she also reads to her daughters – a five-year-old and a four-year-old – at bedtime, currently lots of Greek mythology after which, without fail, they recite the poem that’s been “like a prayer for me” ever since her own childhood, “I know it by heart”: Cavafy’s ‘Ithaca’, the one about the journey being more important than the destination. It all fits together. The causes pursued, even if nothing changes, though she’s actually unshakeably optimistic (“Miserably optimistic!”) that things will change. The journey, the imperative to keep moving forward – but then also the ‘curse’, the knowledge that nothing will ever be enough, the destination elusive. The mother can never be returned, a certain part will always be empty. Still, the journey remains. Right now, Diana’s journey involves going to Nicosia four days a week – though she plans to keep her job in London too, working remotely. “If this is just a five-year term for me, I’m fine with it,” she says candidly, sounding quite unlike the usual Cypriot politician. “I’ll go back to law. The courtroom is kind of my arena, it’s where I belong.” But there’s politics too, and motherhood, and human rights, and big noisy motorbikes – “and, you know, everything else that life throws at us”. She heads off to face it, a brand-new MP in a light-pink T-shirt.