NOBODY should be surprised by the decision of the European Court of Human Rights to reject 49 applications by Greek Cypriot families of the missing. The Court rejected the applications because they had not been submitted within a reasonable period of time, which is set at six months after domestic court remedies had been exhausted. For the court this was in 1990 when the last application by families of the missing had been submitted; the 49 applications were filed after the year 2000.
The decision was final and could not be appealed. The Attorney-general Petros Clerides expressed his displeasure, saying that individual applications could ruin all the gains made by the Republic at the ECHR. He also had an indirect dig at the lawyers representing the individuals, saying that these cases required great care and deep study to be successful. “The Court did not even send notice to the government to intervene,” he said.
This was hardly surprising, given the way that Greek Cypriots have been going to the ECHR with individual applications against Turkey. Cypriots, encouraged by lawyer/politicians have come to treat the ECHR like a local district court, thinking that every human rights violation by Turkey deserved to be examined. After the 2004 referendum, almost 2000 applications were submitted to the ECHR by refugees who were being prevented from going to their homes by Turkey.
This absurd situation was caused by the lawyer/politicians, who created the impression when campaigning against the Annan plan, that the Cyprus problem could be solved fairly by the filing of hundreds of applications for property rights violations. This abuse of the ECHR resulted in the Court suggesting the establishment of the Property Commission in the north to which all refugees were referred. The decision was a humiliation for our government as it indirectly recognised an institution of the pseudo-state as offering an adequate local remedy.
The latest decision was another snub to the Republic, even though the ECHR cited a technical reason for rejecting the 49 applications. The clear message is that the Court is not prepared to look at every individual application made against Turkey, after dealing with certain test cases and issuing rulings. Even from a practical point of view, Greek Cypriots would not have been permitted to hog the Court’s time as it has other applications to deal with as well.
The latest decision is yet another warning, after the setting up of the property commission in the north, that the Cyprus problem would not be solved at the ECHR, as many of our lawyer/politicians have been suggesting. It is also an emphatic refutation of the long-held view, propagated by the lawyer-politicians, that we can secure a just settlement by winning court battles. We will not because the Cyprus problem is a political issue that can only be solved politically.
