A NEWS conference yesterday exposed the cracks between government policy and the country’s obligations to international conventions on asylum seekers.
The European Director of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Anne-Willem Bijlevelv, yesterday held talks with senior officials at the Interior Ministry to ensure that Cyprus was living up to the objective of international treaties.
But it was clear that the UNHCR request for refugees to be allowed access to territory clashed with the government’s preferred “no landings policy”.
Bijlevelv said only that interception was “an issue”.
Suspicions that candidates for political asylum had been deported last year before their cases could be heard spurred the official visit.
Thirty-four Syrians and Kurds who had applications for asylum pending at the UNHCR are thought to have been shipped back to Beirut on the Royal Prince, which sank on its return journey in December.
The UNHCR added that immigrants who wanted to apply for asylum had been deported in November and that they were unable to confirm whether asylum seekers were also sent back in September.
The UNHCR condemns the return of potential political asylum seekers before their cases have been reviewed.
Cyprus ratified the Refugee Act last January, but its own body to review applications of political asylum is only expected to be in place by the end of this year.
Answering questions about why the body was taking so long to set up, Bijlevelv said past experience showed that drafting regulations were very complex, adding that Cyprus was “on the right track”.
She said she was “reassured that the government lives up to its obligations. I am looking forward to a very close co-operation”.
Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Interior, Kyriakos Triantafyllides said that the Council of Ministers had recruited officers to work in the bureau, after they are trained with the help of the UNHCR.
The government is thought to be reluctant to finance the burden of providing for waves of asylum seekers, such as those that flock to Western Europe.
The number of applications for political asylum has risen in recent years. In 1997, there were just 10 to 20. The figure for 2000 was nearer 300.
But, Bijlevelv insisted that Cyprus was in a favourable position. He said the cumbersome and lengthy processes adopted in the West could be examined as lessons about how not to do it.
He said he was confident that immigrants would be given the chance to ask for asylum before being deported again from Cyprus.
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.
