The UK should resettle soon six families of refugees living in the British bases in Cyprus since 1998, Niels Muiznieks, the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, said on Monday.
Asked by CNA to comment on the case, Muiznieks welcomed the judgement of the UK court of appeals, which ordered last week the home secretary to reconsider the case.
The judgement “reinforces the conclusions reached by the UN and myself that the UK authorities should resettle the refugees living in the Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus”, Muižnieks told the CNA.
“I hope that the UK government will soon resettle to the UK these refugees, thus putting an end to a situation that has caused unnecessary human suffering for too long,” the commissioner concluded.
In a unanimous decision on Thursday, the UK court of appeals found British Prime Minister Theresa May had acted unlawfully in her capacity as home secretary in 2014 when refusing entry to a group of refugees stranded in the controversial Richmond Village on the British bases in Cyprus since 1998.
A case marred by protests and complaints of living in terrible conditions, the court found it would be “unreasonable and a failure of the obligations to the refugees if resettlement (to the UK) was not achieved rapidly.”
It urged the current home secretary to re-evaluate the decision which has left them stranded at the Dhekelia base for close to 20 years.
“There can be no justification for any future decision which leaves these claimants’ position unresolved for any further length of time,” it added.
The UK government has consistently denied legal responsibility for the six families, arguing instead that the 1951 Refugee Convention, to which it is a signatory, was never extended to the bases and that the families have no grounds on which to seek resettlement in the UK.
When the case went to the high court in 2016, it ruled that the UK and the bases were required to act within the spirit of the refugee convention because they adopted a policy to do so from the outset.
Following an appeal by both parties, the court of appeals however went further, finding that the Refugee Convention does apply directly to the bases by virtue of the earlier extension of the Refugee Convention to the colony of Cyprus in 1957.
A spokesman for the UK Home Office told the Cyprus Mail on Friday that it would “carefully consider the implications of this decision and whether to appeal to the supreme court”.
