DRAMATIC EVENTS unfolded last night on the roof of a seven-storey building, opposite the Nicosia Municipality, as four Kurdish asylum seekers threatened to jump off if the government failed to meet their demands.
The situation, which lasted from a little after 12pm until 10.30pm last night, was defused at the last minute when AKEL MP Eleni Mavrou secured the men a meeting with House President Demetris Christofias and an official statement by the High Commissioner for Refugees of the UN.
After days of camping outside the Municipality to draw attention to their desperate plight for survival, the four men scaled the building, stood on the edge of the rooftop and refused to come down.
Police cordoned off the roads, from the Ochi roundabout to Eleftheria Square, and a fire engine was on standby. No safety net was set up.
Hundreds gathered below, local and foreign, and watched the men, one of whom had harmed himself with a knife.
The men refused to speak to Greek Cypriot translators and mediators, and offers of psychological help were rejected. Instead they said they would only communicate via a translator brought in from Limassol, who arrived a few hours later.
Mavrou, who was at the scene from early in the evening, later informed them through the translator that House President Demetris Christofias had agreed to meet them early today, which they accepted. But they also requested an official statement by the President of the UN High Commission for Refugees and an assurance by police that there would be no arrests.
Mavrou contacted the High Commissioner, who arrived later and spent a while talking to the four Kurds. And after the police assured them they would not be arrested, they decided to come down.
An elderly Cypriot resident, who was sitting in his local coffee shop situated almost directly below the building the men were threatening to jump off, was not impressed with the events related to the asylum seekers’ protests of the past few days.
“We have too much democracy here,” he told the Cyprus Mail. “It has harmed us. It has been three or four days since they started demonstrating. What measures have been taken by the state to deal with this?” he mused.
“What are we going to do with these people? Where will we find work for them? Are our own people working?”
