A PLAN to halt a family of asylum seekers crossing south was thwarted on Saturday night, when a woman in the party went into labour.
The newborn baby girl has proved a double blessing for the family who will be granted international protection status, the Interior Minister said yesterday.
The baby’s 30-year-old mother was caught crossing over from the occupied areas along with her seven young children, husband and two parents. She was in the advanced stages of labour at the time of her arrest.
Minister Neoklis Sylikiotis announced that it was also possible for the entire family to receive international protection status, which means they can remain in the Republic, without however the same rights as asylum refugees.
“You can’t send these people, who are refugees and fleeing from warring countries, back to their homeland,” Sylikiotis said. “Even if they don’t meet the requirements for their application for asylum, we have the duty to offer them the status of international, supplementary protection, which is offered to people who come from countries where there is war and they are in danger.”
The family are Palestinian asylum seekers, who reportedly paid $2,500 to traffickers to help them travel to the north a few days ago by air, after heading off from the Turkey-Iraq border on September 23.
Dhekelia police had stopped the family of 11 illegal immigrants crossing over from the north, but revised their plans with the baby’s impending arrival .
There were seven children, their parents and grandparents. According to the Dhekelia Police Chief, Theodoros Charlie, upon stopping them officers realised the young pregnant mother was in the advanced stages of labour and evidently distressed.
She was rushed to Dhekelia police station and then to Larnaca General Hospital, where doctors deemed it preferable for her to be transferred to Makarios Hospital in Nicosia.
In the early hours of Monday morning, the young woman gave birth to a healthy little girl, while the hospital yesterday said mother and daughter were doing fine.
According to Phileleftheros newspaper yesterday, police were moved by the sight of the seven small children and their distressed parents.
“We were most saddened by the children and their grandfather,” one of the officers told the daily, adding that it was heartbreaking having to execute a police operation on this beleaguered family in the middle of the night.
