MANY of the ‘boat people’ being held under police guard in a Limassol hotel say they have not yet been questioned by the UNHCR on their applications for political asylum.
The illegal immigrants, currently under threat of deportation, staged a noisy protest at the Pefkos Hotel yesterday, banging on pots and buckets and waving placards.
“They are sending us to go to Africa to die,” a spokesman for some of the immigrants told a news conference in the hotel.
Doros Polycarpou of the Alien Support Group said 30 African and 26 Iraqi Kurd immigrants have not yet been questioned by the UNHCR, which he said had not yet received their applications.
The 56 applications have been submitted again to Interior Minister Dinos Michaelides, who is legally required to pass them on to the UN, he said.
“The government should have helped these people and forwarded their claims. This did not happen,” Polycarpou claimed.
Rwandan Peter Osagiedeliyi, 30, is spokesman for the Africans under guard at the hotel. “They are sending us back to a country where there is a war and life is not safe,” he said yesterday.
The spokesman for the Arab refugees, Suhaib Anwar-Salhih, 30, an Iraqi Kurd, said that 50 immigrants are continuing a hunger strike begun four days ago.
“We came here hungry and we’ll go home hungry,” he said. Anwar-Salhih said he and his wife left Iraq “as life there was dangerous”.
Polycarpou accused the government of being undemocratic in not keeping the immigrants informed of developments about their case.
Amnesty International lawyer Doros Kakoulis said the position is clear: “Legally the government is obliged to provide political asylum or find another county for these people and investigate cases where someone asks for asylum. In no case should someone be returned to a country where he is in danger.”
Even if an application for asylum is rejected by the UNHCR, the immigrant has the right to appeal within a month, he said.
The 109 passengers aboard the Rida Allah were found drifting in Cyprus waters on June 29. Ten Syrian immigrants have already been deported, but only three of the boat people have been granted political asylum by the UNHCR so far.
Disaster struck two days after the start of their voyage from Tripoli in Lebanon. The engine failed and they spent the next nine days adrift at sea. Two men died of hunger and thirst and were thrown overboard. The Syrian captain is now in custody facing charges of carrying passengers on a boat deemed unsafe.
