By Tania Khadder
LAST Friday at 4pm, Maria (not her real name) was about to board a Cyprus Airways flight on the first leg of her 16-hour journey to the Philippines. Seven months pregnant by a Cypriot man and suffering complications, she was being deported for not having a visa to stay in the country.
She continued to voice her objection up to the final minutes and despite orders by Immigration officers, she refused to walk onto the plane. Her own refusal combined with pleas by the Immigrant Support Action Group (ISAG), particularly her adviser Josie Christodoulou, saved her, at least until the birth of her baby.
Now she is determined to prove paternity and fight her case to stay on the island.
“I just thank God for ISAG and for Josie,” Maria, aged 28, told the Cyprus Mail yesterday. “Without them I would have been back in the Philippines now.”
Now she has earned a reprieve until the baby is born, when she aims to carry out a DNA test she hopes will prove her right to stay in Cyprus.
Her nightmare began when an anonymous caller tipped off Immigration to her illegal status, and officers came to her house to prepare her for deportation.
“They first took me from my home to the hospital to check to see if I could travel and the doctor told me I was okay,” Maria said. “I didn’t want to go, and I knew that my family at home would not accept me, but I felt I had no choice.”
Maria said immigration officers took her home to pack her things. “They kept yelling at me to pack faster,” she said.
They then took her to Larnaca airport, where they told her she would sleep in a chair and wait for her flight the following afternoon.
But despite being approved for travel, Maria felt weak, and feared she would not make it through the long flight and five-hour layover in Dubai.
“That night, I was bleeding so I went to tell Immigration I wasn’t feeling well,” Maria said. “And they yelled at me and called me a liar, and told me to go back to my seat and that the doctor said I should be okay.”
When she was still sick the following morning and began to vomit, they agreed to take her to the hospital, where doctors told her she was sick as a result of her overnight stay at the airport.
“The doctor said it was too cold, and that because they didn’t give me a blanket, I was weak and bleeding,” she said.
But despite such difficulties, Immigration took her back to the airport intending to go through with the deportation. It wasn’t until the last minute when Maria was still sick and refused to board the plane that she was told she would not be forced to leave.
When Maria left the Philippines in January 2001, she had envisioned a better life for herself and her three children back home.
Two years later, she is pregnant, unable to work and has narrowly escaped deportation twice.
Divorced, with the family’s financial burden resting on her shoulders, she was working in Cyprus to send money home. “I came here to Cyprus in order to earn money to send back to my children because they are going to school now,” Maria told the Cyprus Mail.
But Maria claimed her employer physically abused her, and when she complained, she was fired and from then on was considered illegal.
“I reported the abuse to the police. I went for a report at the Strovolos police station and I had a medical certificate from the hospital showing my injuries.”
She went on to work at a fish factory in Paphos, where she was introduced to a Cypriot fisherman who claimed to be looking for a Filipina wife. Soon after, she became involved with him.
“He told me I didn’t have to work. That he would help me and give me money to send my children. And he gave me some at first,” Maria said. “He told me he had no children and wanted us to make a baby.”
When she got pregnant, however, things changed rapidly. “He knew that I was pregnant and he was finished with me,” she added.
“I tried to report him so that he would have to support my baby, but he denied that it was his. He said he wanted a DNA test. But we can’t do it until the baby is born in April. At that point, I will have the right to stay in Cyprus because I will prove my baby is Cypriot.”
At three months pregnant, she found out that the father of her baby was in fact married, but separated, and had four children of his own.
“I want to fight. He must support my baby. I heard that he has done the same thing to another Filipina before me, and his wife sent her back when she was pregnant.
“Now he is with another woman. He claims my baby is not his, but the day I was supposed to leave, he sent me a text message on my phone saying ‘Have a safe trip my love, and take care of my baby.’
“He was so happy I was leaving, and now he is scared to know that I have stayed,” she said.
Maria hopes that after her baby is born, she will be able to collect child support and work for a while to make a better life for herself and soon-to-be four children. She says her struggle to stay is a fight for all Filipinos on the island.
“We are expected to keep quiet because we are not Cypriot. But I am going to put up a fight,” she added.
Immigration was not available for comment.
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.
