By Hamza Hendawi
LOST AT SEA, thirsty, hungry and scorched by a merciless sun, images of living it up in a place even as modest as Limassol’s Pefkos Hotel would certainly pass for the stuff of dreams.
Tucked away in a nondescript part of Limassol, life in the Pefkos was indeed a dream that miraculously came true for the 109 mostly Arab and African passengers who stared death in the face while their ramshackle trawler drifted aimlessly in the eastern Mediterranean before rescue came.
But to most of them, staying in the £25-a-night Pefkos is now like life in a jail.
“We just eat and sleep,” said 26-year-old Imad el-Deen Atta, an Egyptian from the oasis province of el-Fayoum southwest of Cairo.
“We are like prisoners. They treat us well, but we need more than just food and sleep,” he told the Cyprus Mail.
“The police are less rigid now when it comes to movement from one room to another on the same floor,” said Khamees Abdul-Lateef, 32, the only other Egyptian from among the passengers of the Syrian-flagged Rida Allah.
“But you still need a permission to leave your floor,” complained Abdul- Lateef, a welder from the coastal city of Mansoura.
What he and compatriot Atta have in common with the rest of the Rida Allah passengers, who come from as far afield as Liberia and Bangladesh, is the now-dashed dream of life in western Europe.
They had paid villainous middlemen thousands of dollars in return for passage to Greece or Italy. But their journey of hope came to a sad end when the Rida Allah developed engine trouble two days after leaving the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli on June 18. After drifting in the sea for nine days, a Ukrainian ship found them and towed them to Limassol.
“We are here like prisoners and it does not feel good at all,” said Peter Osagiadeliyi, a 30-year-old Rwandan who, judging by available evidence, has become the spokesman for the more than 60 Africans amongst the Rida Allah passengers. Other Africans speaking to the Mail while eating lunch yesterday spoke of their desperate need for exercise and recreation.
A total of 20 policemen are assigned to guard the passengers at any given time. The government is picking up a daily tab of £2,500 for their stay in the hotel, the passengers are not allowed to use the often deserted swimming pool and the pool table. No newspapers are available to the passengers and use of the telephone is restricted.
The frustration of life in the Pefkos and the uncertainty of their situation prompted the passengers on Tuesday to begin a hunger strike to press their demands to see UN officials with a view to looking into settlement in a third country and to protest against the government’s reported plans to return them to their countries of origin.
The strike, however, was short-lived. No-one went downstairs for breakfast on Tuesday, but a handful ate lunch and everyone was back for dinner after a senior Limassol police officer promised the passengers a visit by a UN official yesterday or today.
“Our destination was not Cyprus,” said Osagiadeliyi, the Rwandan who was on the boat with his wife. “They should not rescue us for food only. We have food back in Africa. They should have rescued our lives and that is the most important thing,” he said before starting his fish-and-chips lunch.
“They should repair the boat, release the captain from jail and allow us to sail to our original destination,” he demanded.
The Cyprus government, fearing a wave of economic refugees if it acts soft on the Rida Allah case, has yet to make public what it plans to do with the passengers, although there have been strong hints of mass deportations.
Lacking the legal framework to deal with political asylum applications, Cyprus has had little choice but to act tough on immigration issues, largely because of the vulnerability it finds itself in as a result of close proximity to the Middle East and Africa. The two areas have traditionally been prime sources of political and economic migrants as a result of the region’s chronic conflicts and poor economic conditions.
The Rida Allah passengers come from Sierra Leone, Congo, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Liberia, Sudan, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Bangladesh. Many of them say their lives would be in danger or they would face imprisonment if they were sent back to their home countries.
“There is no way the Cypriots are going to send me back home alive,” said one passenger yesterday. “I might just as well die here.”
