By Charlie Charalambous and Martin Hellicar
BOAT PEOPLE confined to a Limassol hotel yesterday accused police rapid reaction squad officers of storming their rooms and beating them up.
In a filmed interview seen by the Cyprus Mail, Iraqi Kurd Suhaib Anwar- Salih told how black-clad police ‘commandos’ laid into him and other boat people holed up in the Pefkos Hotel since their dramatic rescue at sea almost two months ago.
“Police yesterday came to every floor and beat everybody,” he said.
The 30-year-old said the unprovoked assaults took place on Wednesday morning shortly after 30 African boat people had been put into police vans to be taken to police cells in Larnaca. Police said at the time that the operation had been carried out without incident.
“After they took people from breakfast, they told us ‘everybody go up to your rooms’ and when we went they came to the rooms and took everybody and beat them up,” Anwar-Salih alleged.
Only the women and children among the 63 boat people remaining at the Pefkos were spared, he said.
The interview, filmed at the hotel yesterday, showed one man with his arm in a sling, a torn shirt and bruised shoulder and another two with black eyes.
“Everybody is very worried because it is bad news for us, and maybe tomorrow everybody will be put in prison,” the Kurd said.
His claims were backed up by members of the Aliens Support Movement. “We tried to get two lawyers in to see them today but they wouldn’t let them in. The police are letting no-one in,” spokesman Doros Polycarpou said.
Police have tightened security at the hotel following clashes with protesting African boat people outside the building last week. The boat people were staging a protest after foiling a police attempt to take a number of them away for deportation.
Yesterday the government was accused of trying to deport the 30 African boat people, transferred to Larnaca police holding cells on Wednesday, by the back door.
Thirty nationals from Sudan, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone were escorted from the three-star hotel, where they had been staying since their June 29 rescue from the trawler Rida Allah after it was adrift for 10 days, to cells at a former police HQ in Larnaca.
Eleni Mavrou, of the Aliens Support Movement, yesterday criticised the legality of the move and the conditions under which the boat people are being detained.
“Our concern has increased because all contact with them has been prohibited,” she said.
Mavrou believes their detention is illegal because they were not arrested or taken to court for a remand order.
“Under the constitution only a court can decide to imprison them, which is exactly what has happened to them – whatever the authorities claim,” Mavrou said.
The movement accuses the government of preparing for clandestine deportations in an effort to avoid a recurrence of the violence in Limassol which accompanied first efforts to deport them last week.
But the Immigration Service said yesterday no one would be deported until the UNHCR had finished processing applications for asylum.
“No decision on deportations has been taken. If the immigrants are recognised as political refugees then they will be allowed to stay or taken to a third country,” immigration chief Christodoulos Nicolaides said.
He denied that the 30 Africans were being held prisoner.
“It is not imprisonment but a kind of detention until the whole process is cleared up. Every step we’ve taken has been agreed with the UNHCR who are fully informed of the situation,” Nicolaides said.
He stressed that no other country faced with a similar situation would put up illegal immigrants in hotel accommodation: “No other country would put these people up in a hotel – their living conditions in Cyprus cannot compare,” he said.
After visiting the holding cells in Larnaca yesterday, Akel deputy Doros Christodoulides praised the authorities for their handling of the boat people saga.
“The government should be congratulated for showing great sensitivity and allowing the boat people temporary asylum at the hotel and at the cells to ensure their living conditions are as comfortable as possible,” he said.
Christodoulides said the authorities had every right to arrest the boat people and take them to court to secure remand orders, but that they had chosen not to do so for humanitarian reasons.
Since the 113 boat people were rescued from the battered Syrian fishing trawler, twenty have been repatriated and the remaining 93 are seeking asylum.
