By Jenny Curtis
SOVEREIGN Base Area Police and British Army soldiers in Cyprus have mounted a joint operation in an attempt to prevent the theft of watermelons from land near Larnaca.
Recently more than five tonnes were stolen from a farm, and hundreds of pounds worth of damage was inflicted by the culprits trampling on plants. Now regular patrols are being carried out both day and night in the hope of catching those responsible and to stop further incidents occurring in the area.
Earlier this summer a group of farmers alerted the SBA Police about a number of small thefts from their fields. Initially they were noticing between five and 10 melons disappearing every night. Then one morning one of the farmers, Andreas Dimitri, arrived at his plantation with a crew of pickers to discover that five tonnes were missing.
“Everywhere I looked I could see piles of melons that had been picked – either the thieves were disturbed or ran out of time – but they still managed to clear an area of five donums,” he said.
To make matters worse, he realised on closer inspection the full extent of the destruction, as the thieves had ruined many of the plants by stamping on them, effectively wiping out a further five tonnes of crop.
“I was completely devastated at what these people had done to my land and my crops,” he said. This type of incident is bad news for Andreas, who relies on the sale of crops for his income: on that particular day the market price for water melons was at a high of 20 cents a kilo.
“I couldn’t believe what had happened. I felt as though I was living in the times of my forefathers, one thousand years ago.”
He abandoned the day’s work and immediately called the police, who confirmed it had been a pre-planned operation. A truck had been used to take the melons away as the wire had been cut to gain access to the field and there were numerous tyre marks.
“It was clearly a hasty job, judging by the amount of damage caused,” one officer said, “but then thieves are usually in a hurry.” Andreas says he wouldn’t have minded if they’d just taken two or three melons as he regularly gives them to local shepherds, friends and other farmers – but what made him so angry was that these were obviously taken for trade.
“Someone, somewhere is spending my hard-earned profits,” he said bitterly.
The problem is being taken seriously by the SBA Police and British Army Troops in Cyprus, who for 21 nights have been carrying out an intensive observation operation using sophisticated surveillance equipment at six farms in the area. Five soldiers and five police officers are observing the land at any given time. Superintendent Malcolm Magney, the Operations and Crime Manager for the SBA Police at Dhekelia, said: “We are sincere in our support of the local community and think this is a despicable crime against farmers who have worked all year to produce a crop, simply for it to be stolen at the time of harvesting.
For a dedicated farmer trying to raise his family such a severe financial loss is very difficult to deal with. Certainly we will do everything in our power to catch the people responsible.” Farmers have welcomed the police response, but some feel it does not go far enough.
“Of course we are pleased so much is being done to help prevent further thefts and yes, I am generally satisfied with the action taken,” Dimitri said. “However as farmers we are having to deal with losses amounting to hundreds or thousands of pounds on an annual basis”. He estimates that over the past 10 years he has lost approximately £30,000 worth of property to thieves in the form of pipes, irrigation systems, fuel and crops.
“I think we deserve greater protection – after all we’re living in the twentieth-first century and this sort of thing should not be allowed.”
