By Martin Hellicar
A HUNGER strike by protesting boat people holed up in a Limassol hotel ended “days ago”, police stated yesterday.
There have been conflicting reports about how many of the Arab and African passengers rescued off Cyprus on June 29 were involved in a hunger strike, which began on Sunday July 26.
On July 27, police said less than 40 of the 70 men who began the strike in protest at a government decision not to allow any of them to stay were actually keeping to it. But three days later, on July 30, the boat people themselves said 50 men were still abstaining.
A senior Limassol police officer said yesterday that none of the 103 passengers were on hunger strike. “There’s no such thing, it ended five or ten days ago,” he told the Cyprus Mail.
It was not possible to contact any of the survivors at the Pefkos hotel to get their side of the story yesterday.
The police officer confirmed that one of the passengers, a Bangladeshi man, had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and was receiving treatment in Limassol hospital.
“We will make sure he is healed first before he is sent away,” the officer said. He said every care was being taken to ensure the boat people stayed healthy. “We have doctors at the hotel constantly,” he said.
The passengers have been complaining about the restrictive regime imposed by police guarding their hotel.
The boat people – who hail from Sudan, Sierra Leone, Congo, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon – have also complained their asylum claims have not been given proper consideration.
Only three of them were granted asylum status by the government, but even they are to be sent away to third countries.
Limassol police said yesterday officials were still working on securing travel documents for the survivors so they could be sent to their home or to other countries willing to receive them.
Ten Syrians among the 113 people rescued off a Syrian-flagged fishing boat found drifting off Cyprus a month ago have already been sent home.
The boat people had been stranded for ten days and were suffering from the effects of dehydration and starvation when they were found by a Ukrainian cargo vessel.
