By Anthony O. Miller
CYPRUS may soon have even more boat people to house, if a Lebanese official’s claims prove true – that none of the 89 illegal immigrants who arrived in Cyprus late on Thursday by boat came from Lebanon, but were loaded into their craft at sea off boats from other countries.
Cyprus and Lebanon have an agreement to repatriate promptly all boat people arriving in Cyprus from Lebanon. But Khalil El-Habre, Lebanese Embassy chargé d’affaires, raised the prospect that none of the 89 boat people rescued at sea on Thursday came from Lebanon, in which case they could not be returned there.
The 89, including 17 children and 18 women, who were brought into Larnaca Port on Thursday were said to have tossed their documentation into the sea when Cyprus police helicopters and a coast guard boat apprehended them in stormy seas off Cape Greco.
El-Habre conceded that this may have happened, but said some of the boat people told him their papers were kept by the ‘mother boats’ that off- loaded them into their small craft at sea.
“No Lebanese was on board” the 89 immigrants’ boat, which was freshly painted with the Lebanese flag, El-Habre said. “We did not register this boat in Lebanon. We don’t know where it is registered,” he said.
“Even the supposed-Lebanese captain is not Lebanese. He is Syrian,” he added. This means the captains of two of the last four boat-people crafts to land in Cyprus were Syrian.
The boat people said their boat was “a companion one. It does not contain any compass to direct them. So they were directed by another boat, which left them off the Cyprus coast,” El-Habre said. He said the other boats “returned”, but “we do not know where to”.
“They put this boat on to the high seas, and they loaded people into it from boat to boat, or from the shore – which is supposed to be near Tripoli, in Lebanon – by small boat,” El-Habre said. “So it was not necessary for the captain to have been on shore” in Lebanon to pick up his 89 passengers.
“People (among the 89) coming from Somalia, Sierra Leone and Iraq said they were on two or three boats before getting into this boat that arrived in Cyprus. This means it is a big operation and involves many people. I believe it is a large international smuggling operation,” El-Habre said.
Police said 76 adults went on a two-hour hunger strike yesterday aboard the government-chartered cruise boat Royal Prince, where the 89 illegal immigrants are being kept dockside under police guard. Police did not know why they began fasting – or why they stopped.
El-Habre said it would be up to Cyprus whether or not to call in the UNHCR. Police had little or no additional information on the boat people at all yesterday.
