By Anthony O. Miller
CYPRUS yesterday sent back to Lebanon 89 boat people rescued in stormy seas off Cape Greco last week.
The deportation was conducted with the co-operation of Lebanese officials, in keeping with a January agreement between Cyprus and Lebanon, under which Beirut agreed to accept back illegal immigrants who embarked from Lebanese soil.
The 89 were returned aboard the Royal Prince at 8am, and were expected to arrive in Beirut Port at about 8pm yesterday, Costas Papamichael, an Immigration official, told the Cyprus Mail.
The illegal immigrants had been detained under police guard aboard the same government-chartered vessel since being guided into Larnaca Harbour by a Coast Guard vessel last week.
Cyprus police officers were aboard the Royal Prince during the immigrants’ return voyage to Lebanon, newly appointed Interior Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou said. A police boat also accompanied the vessel back to Beirut, Papamichael added.
The Foreign Ministry in a statement expressed the government’s “pleasure towards the government of Lebanon” for taking the boat people back after “it was proved (they) departed in the direction of Cyprus from Tripoli, Lebanon.”
The Ministry praised the “decision of the friendly Lebanese government (as)… practical proof of the close and friendly ties between Cyprus and Lebanon… (in the) practical application of the principle of good neighbourly relations.”
Few of the 89 had any identity documents, since many had thrown their papers into the sea as the coast guard vessel approached their overcrowded Syrian-registered fishing boat. Police managed to recover some documents from the water, but most of them were lost, complicating efforts to identify and deport them.
However, interviews with the boat people satisfied Lebanese embassy officials in Nicosia that they had indeed set out from Tripoli, even though no Lebanese nationals were aboard the vessel.
Many of the 89 boat people claimed to have been loaded into the fishing boat at sea from larger “mother boats,” while others claimed to have been ferried from Tripoli in small boats to the fishing boat in which they were ultimately found.
Some of the boat people said their vessel, which lacked a navigation compass but was freshly painted with the flag of Lebanon, had been guided by other boats to near where the Cyprus Coast Guard boat intercepted it off Cape Greco.
Lebanese chargé d’affaires Khalil El-Habre said these factors and others suggested to him the boat people were pawns in a large international smuggling operation.
Meanwhile, Cyprus hopes to arrange a visit for Christodoulou to Damascus to discuss with Syria an accord on repatriation of illegal immigrants similar to the one Cyprus has with Lebanon, Papamichael said.
Meanwhile, Cyprus is beefing up its helicopter and Coast Guard boat patrols of coastal waters, he added. The aim is to turn back such vessels as soon as they enter Cyprus’ territorial waters to prevent their making landfall.
Illegal boat people have become a major problem of late. Last June, Cyprus authorities rescued 113 boat people at sea. Of them, 24 are still being housed at state expense in the Pefkos Hotel in Limassol. Another 23 were granted refugee status and the remaining 66 were deported or repatriated.
With several wars raging in Africa, and instability throughout the Middle East, the government fears the island – at the “crossroads of three continents” – will increasingly become a target of migrants on the move.
