Kurd breaks his hunger strike

By Melina Demetriou

KURDISH asylum seeker Mehmet Dhogan yesterday ended his seven-day hunger strike, aimed at putting pressure on the government to allow him to seek asylum in a third country so he could be reunited with his family.

Although Dhogan had previously threatened to starve himself to death unless the government satisfied his demands, he gave up his protest yesterday without having got any reassurance over his plight.

“I will now have to wait and see,” he told the Cyprus Mail yesterday, insisting that if he went back to Turkey to be with his family, he would be imprisoned.

Dhogan, 33, from Mash in Turkey, fled Turkey five years ago living his pregnant wife and an 18-month old son behind, initially going to the occupied areas, where he stayed for three years. He then moved to the free areas, where he has been living for two years. In that time, he has been twice stopped from leaving the country.

Dhogan asked Interior Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou a month ago to allow him seek asylum in another country.

“I do not know what to do. Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou promised he would do what he could for me but I have not heard anything from him for a month now,” Dhogan said yesterday.

George Theodorou, a senior official at the Immigration Department told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that the Interior Ministry’s hands were tied, insisting Christodoulou had never promised anything to the Kurdish man.

Dhogan two years ago applied to the UN High Commissioner For Refugees to recognise his claim for political asylum. But the UNHCR turned down his appeal after an investigation into his case proved it to be very weak.

“Cyprus cannot serve as a means for illegal immigrants to travel to Europe, ” Theodorou said yesterday.

“Our government has no say in this. It is a matter for the UN,” he added.

But Dhogan, who has not seen his family for five years, told the Cyprus Mail that if he went back to Turkey he would face at least 15 years in prison.

“My family cannot come here because they are Turkish. The only way out of this is to live with them in another country,” he said, adding he had had “a very tough time in Turkey”.

The Immigration Department is allowing Dhogan to remain in Cyprus, and he receives monthly benefit payments from the welfare department.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.