By Martin Hellicar
HUNDREDS of pro-Serb demonstrators pelted the US embassy in Nicosia with eggs and tomatoes yesterday after an all-party rally in Eleftheria Square to condemn Nato air strikes against Yugoslavia.
About 3,000 people had gathered for the 11am rally and some 300 of these – mostly Serbs living on the island – later descended on the embassy to vent their fury at the Nato bombardments.
Police had taken added security measures following similar protests outside the embassy over the past ten days.
The demonstrators faced about 100 officers in riot gear and barbed-wire barricades put up much further away from the embassy than during previous demonstrations, thus preventing them from getting within easy egg-throwing range of the building. The protesters’ spirits also seemed dampened by the wet weather and their small number compared to earlier protests.
The protest was virtually incident free, although there were some scuffles as a handful of protestors trying to breach a barricade clashed with police, but no injuries were reported.
“It was quiet,” police spokesman Stelios Neophytou said.
The flag-waving, whistle-blowing protestors – many of them sporting the ‘target’ logos popularised by protests in Belgrade – chanted anti-US and anti-Nato slogans and burnt photographs of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
A sandwich van parked amongst the demonstrators did brisk business before the protestors were finally driven away by heavy rain.
Earlier, acting President Spyros Kyprianou – speaking only in his capacity as House president – denounced the Nato air strikes in an impassioned address at Eleftheria Square.
Kyprianou called the air strikes were a US whim and a violation of the human rights of Serbs in Yugoslavia.
“Who gave the US the right to act as custodians of the world?” the Diko leader wondered. “The worst thing is that human rights are being trodden underfoot in the name of human rights,” he told the banner-waving crowd.
“We are not anti-American, anti-French, anti-German or anti-British, but rather we are pro-justice. We have no right not to support the Serbs when we have for so long struggled for our own human rights,” he shouted.
“Merciless bombardment, killing women and children; is this a method for securing a peaceful solution (to the Kosovo crisis)?”
“The Cypriot people – who love peace and justice as no other people in the world – demand an end to the bombing,” he pronounced.
The crowd lapped it up, cheering wildly and waving Cyprus, Greek and Kurdish flags. “Americans: killers of the peoples,” they chanted, and “USA- Nato: murderous syndicate.”
Banners bore slogans like “The law of the jungle will not pass”, “No to the Jewish-Semitic plot against Orthodox Serbia” and “British Bases out of Cyprus”.
Most Cypriots view the air strikes as an unjustified and self-serving US- led offensive against the Serbs, a fellow Orthodox Christian people.
There were many Serbs among the crowd but students were conspicuous by their absence. “The students never turn up when it’s not a school day,” one demonstrator complained.
The mass protest was organised by all the local political parties and was attended by deputies, party and Church leaders.
The government was not represented at the rally. It has voiced concern about the impression pro-Serb demonstrations might create abroad. But Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides has also made it clear that the government had no wish to prevent the rally from taking place.
The government has been careful not to express any blatantly pro-Serb views since the bombing of Yugoslavia began two weeks ago, despite outright condemnation of the Nato action by the House and the public at large.
Meanwhile, according to Turkish Cypriot press reports yesterday, Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash has offered to re-open hotels abandoned in Famagusta since the invasion in 1974 to house Albanian refugees fleeing Kosovo.
