WITH ONLY a rucksack to hold his few possessions, Liberian refugee Mattheux Brown, 42, who has been diagnosed as mentally ill, has made the steps of the Austrian Embassy in Nicosia his home for the last two months, refusing to leave until his demands are met.
“I want to go back to Liberia but I cannot go back with an Austrian passport,” said Brown claiming that the Austrian government is out to kill him.
He has made two demands of the Austrian embassy; either that they send him to America to get treatment for what he describes as “complicated head problems” or they arrange for an escort to Liberia, where some of his family still resides.
Brown was making his way from Austria back to Liberia when he ended up in Cyprus. His original course was diverted as he arrived in Cairo just as the recent uprisings began,
He left Austria on January 25 and arrived in Cyprus on February 11. “I wanted a ticket from Vienna straight to Africa but they told me there were no direct flights,” said Brown to travelled here via Malta, then Cairo.
Brown left Liberia when he was 25 due to the first Liberian civil war. In Austria he was granted refugee status. However, he claims that in 2003 the Austrian Federal Government said that he should leave his home in Vienna. “They terrorised me and deprived me of gainful employment…I wrote letters but no one replied,” said Brown. As a result Brown made his way all round Europe over the course of seven years, including Belgium France, Spain, Holland and Italy. He only returned to Austria at the end of 2010 claiming that Dutch police had sent him back.
According to Christine Wendl, a counsellor at the Austrian embassy in Nicosia, Brown does not hold an Austrian passport. “He has not been naturalised,” said Wendl. “The passport he holds simply means that his refugee status was issued in Austria,” she said.
Wendl said the embassy is not obliged to help him as he is not Austrian but they have offered to send him back to Vienna where he can get proper treatment. Brown has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, she said.
The Ministry of Labour along with the Welfare office are also trying to help by attempting to temporarily put Brown up at a hotel, but he has refused, according to George Papageorgiou, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Labour. Brown stated that two ladies came to visit him from the Welfare office but would not take him to the hotel themselves.
“He’s been visited three times and we’ve tried to offer him help but he won’t accept,” said Papageorgiou adding that they are making efforts to pass on his case to the Ministry of Health as they are fully aware of his health problems.
