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Rina Katselli

Rina Katselli-Charalambidou is a Greek Cypriot author and former member of the House of Representatives of Cyprus.

Katselli was born in Kerynia in 1938. She lived in that northern Cyprus city until the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on July 20, 1974.

In the 1950s, Katselli joined EOKA in the struggle against the British colonial authorities. For her activities, she was briefly jailed.

After independence in 1960, she married Stelios Katsellis - who served as Mayor of Kerynia - and started to write, mostly about local life, the EOKA struggle and even theatrical works and poetry.

After the July Turkish invasion of Cyprus, she fled and lived first in Lemesos and, after 1978, in Lefkosia.

Katselli was elected to the House of Representatives of Cyprus on May 24, 1981, under the banner of the Democratic Party (DIKO) - the first Greek-Cypriot woman to do so. On her first appearance before the legislative body, she came in a traditional Cypriot outfit to be sworn in. In the House, she helped to enact legislation on various matters of equality of women, family life, civil marriage, the Greek language, etc. She remained an MP until the elections of 1996.