Single mother faces deportation to warzone
A 29-YEAR-OLD Iraqi single mother’s political asylum application was rejected despite police confirming the authenticity of her passport yesterday.
“Her application was denied without even waiting to determine whether her passport was genuine,” KISA president Doros Polycarpou said.
Since the decision was taken in March, the Social Welfare Services have terminated all benefit payments to Anayda Hermiz and her child, despite the fact that her daughter Angela’s father is Cypriot.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail yesterday, Hermiz said she didn’t know what to do or where to turn.
“I have no papers. I have nothing. No job, no money, nothing. I don’t know what to do. I need help,” she said.
She added that she had not paid rent or her electricity bills for almost four months.
“Today, my baby only had milk to drink. Two, three days ago a neighbour brought me a banana for the baby. Now I only have one bottle of milk left. I sold two gold necklaces and a bracelet for £300 last month to get some money to buy her food. It was worth much more but that’s what I got for it… I can sleep without food, it doesn’t matter. But I feel so bad when the baby can’t eat,” she said.
Clearly exasperated, the 29-year-old said she couldn’t understand why her asylum application had been turned down.
In its letter of rejection, the asylum service said Hermiz, who claims to be a Christian from Baghdad, was “unconvincing” in her testimony. The service also said her persecution claims had been “unreliable”, her claim to be Christian lacked credibility, and she had failed to provide sufficient evidence about her country of origin.
But Polycarpou said ordinarily Iraqis obtained immediate subsidiary protection, whether they were persecuted or not, and that he believed the rejection of her application might be sexist in its motive.
“Why is it that all Iraqi men are granted asylum and this woman, the mother of a young child, is turned down? They didn’t even wait for police to determine that her passport was genuine. They just made their decision and that was it,” he said.
With a two-year-old daughter to support, Hermiz was advised by Limassol immigration to withdraw her appeal to the decision and apply for residency as the mother of a Cypriot national instead.
To do so however, she needed her passport, which until yesterday the asylum service had failed to return to her. It was only with KISA’s intervention that the document turned up. In fact when the 29-year-old travelled up to Nicosia from Limassol yesterday morning, with Angela in tow, to meet with the asylum service officer as scheduled she was refused entry by the receptionist. Hermiz was told her file had been closed, that she had no place in the building and was to please leave.
It was only when she called Polycarpou who spoke to the receptionist that she was allowed in.
He said: “What have we come to? Can they [immigrants] not even go to their scheduled appointments? Couldn’t the receptionist have made a simple call to see if she did have a meeting instead of just turning her away? Without our interference she wouldn’t have been able to go to her appointment. It’s a nightmare.”
This is not the first time immigrants have come up against government services’ intransigence, with KISA having accused authorities of holding prejudiced perceptions of immigrants.
“They consider them all liars; that they’re coming to Cyprus to exploit us; that the men will take our jobs and the women our men,” a KISA volunteer said.
Hermiz, who arrived in Cyprus in June 2004 and applied for political asylum within the first week, said she believed her ex-boyfriend, who had initially tried to deny paternity until a DNA test proved otherwise, was behind everything.
“I think he must be causing all these problems. He wants to throw my baby out of the country so he doesn’t have to pay anything. Other women with children don’t have these problems so why should I?” she said.
Hermiz was referring to the legal proceedings she’d started to force Angela’s father to pay child support.
Although being the mother of a Cypriot child ostensibly gives her access to social benefits, the Social Welfare Service denied her claim, disbelieving the court documents proving the identity of Angela’s father.
Hermiz said her passport was also outdated and that to apply for residency she would likely need it renewed.
“When I asked them where I was expected to do that [there is no Iraqi embassy or consulate in Cyprus] they told me they couldn’t help me,” she said.
The 29-year-old fears she will be forced to travel to Syria or Iraq to have it renewed.
She said: “What I do? I don’t know what I do: I have no paper, no work, I have nothing. You get crazy… You have no papers, you have been running three years to get these papers, you would end up in hospital. All these papers and I am nothing.
“Believe me I don’t know what’s going on. I want help. I have a very bad life you understand? I want papers for me, a passport for my baby, to be allowed to work, to have help from the welfare office.”
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