A TEAM of international bird conservationists yesterday described how they were savagely beaten up during an anti-poaching operation in Paralimni at the weekend.
Members of the German-based Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS), had just dismantled scores of illegal lime sticks when they were brutally assaulted by three men.
CABS general secretary Alex Heyd, with blood seeping from a gash on his head and his face swollen, said his members feared for their safety when they were set upon by the men who pelted them with stones.
“Without warning four men drove up in a pick-up and ran towards us throwing stones. Two of the team were thrown to the ground and mercilessly kicked and punched. Our video camera was grabbed, smashed on the ground, and then battered against the temple of a barely conscious Italian bird guard. We were beaten like pigs.”
CABS said both Italians were robbed of their personal possessions and needed extensive treatment for their injuries. They were released from Famagusta hospital late on Sunday evening in order to make statements to the police.
The other team members, including a British man and a German man, and a journalist from the New Yorker magazine escaped with minor bruises and were able to alert the police. The police arrived promptly but the attackers had already fled, CABS said..
The American journalist who was accompanying the team had not anticipated being drawn into – in his words: “a war zone”.
Heyd said he himself was “kicked, beaten and punched for about ten minutes”.
“I now have trouble walking because I was kicked so much on the muscles of my right leg. I was also punched on the ears and head,” Heyd told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
The assault reached a climax when a digital video camera was repeatedly smashed on the head of one CABS member, leaving him barely conscious.
“Faced with verbal and physical abuse, it is evident that Cyprus has become a very dangerous place, so we made need to invest in taking bodyguards for any future trips to here,” CABS spokesman David Conlin added.
Moments after the beating the assailants fled in a pick-up truck, whose driver was later arrested by police, with officers confident they will soon apprehend the other culprits.
“The Paralimni police chief has assured me that his officers will follow a policy of zero tolerance against such criminals and I am confident that we have established a firm basis for cooperation with the Cyprus police at a local as well as a national level,” Conlin added.
Conservationist groups have condemned the brutality as the attack comes amid growing concern over the level of violence directed at CABS during recent patrols in Malta, Italy and Cyprus.
Paralimni police spokesman George Economou told the Cyprus Mail officers were looking the data on the hard disc of the shattered video camera which is being evaluated by laboratory IT experts.
“We have sent the camera to Nicosia to be checked and meanwhile we are looking for the three men involved in this incident, we are holding the driver of the van in custody,” he said.
Over the past week fourteen members of CABS have discovered 961 lime sticks and nine large mist nets in the east of Cyprus.
According to CABS, the scale of illegal trapping, which diminished dramatically before EU accession, appears to have reached new heights – and they are determined that patrols will continue.
“If they think they can scare us by just beating us up then they are wrong, these poachers will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. They are a real worry and a real danger,” Heyd added.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one Paralimni resident who admitted being a former bird hunter said he was outraged that authorities had allowed ‘foreigners to enforce the law in Cyprus’
“Their tactics make people angry and it just makes this problem worse. Why are men from Germany allowed on private land, in people’s gardens without permission? This is unacceptable – they should stop interfering in other people’s lives and traditional hobbies,” he said.
CABS also expressed disappointment that they were ignored when they requested help from the German Embassy in Nicosia.
“It was incredible, they did not want to know about what had happened, where as our ambassador in Malta actually called us to check everything is OK,” Andreas Rutigliano a CABS support worker told the Mail.
A German Embassy spokesman refused to comment on the incident, saying they “don’t talk to the press about such matters.”
