Pakistani detention condemned

MIGRANT support group KISA on Saturday condemned the detention of a Pakistani national on the pretext that he had entered into a marriage of convenience with a Romanian woman.
According to KISA the man came to Cyprus in 2005 to study. His wife came to Cyprus in 2006 to work and in 2009 they were legally married here and in 2012 they had their first child.
On October 10, members of the Aliens and Immigration Service (AIS), in cooperation with the Civil Registry and Migration Department (CRMD), arrested him at his workplace on the grounds that the marriage was judged as one of convenience.
“The charge on which he is being detained and is now facing the risk of immediate deportation is based exclusively on the authorities’ statement of the fact that the couple has recently changed address without notifying them,” KISA’s statement said. It added that if the authorities needed to notify the couple for inspection, then they could have contacted them either on their mobile phones that remained the same.
According to KISA the man is now being held at the Detention Centre in Menoyia, where the administration did not allow him to go to Larnaca General Hospital, where he had scheduled an operation on October 16.
“KISA, through its experience with cases of a similar nature, perceives – yet again – the racist attitude of the authorities towards mixed marriages of European and / or Cypriot citizens with either African or Muslim nationals from other countries,” the statement concluded.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.