THE FATHER of a 15-year-old girl savagely beaten by a racist mob yesterday described the moment his daughter thought she was going to die.
But Manoah Duku told the Sunday Mail that he forgave his daughter’s attackers, as protesters yesterday gathered in Nicosia, calling for action before such racist violence spiralled out of control.
Margarita Duku fell victim to an unprovoked racist attack on Thursday night, when she was badly beaten by 40 youths – boys and girls – after a volleyball match between Akaki gymnasium and Stavros gymnasium, a Strovolos secondary school.
“When I went to pick her up she was crying and she was explaining what had happened to her,” her father Manoah Duku told the Sunday Mail yesterday.
“They kicked her, punched her, pulled her hair and kept chanting ‘Blacks out of Cyprus’.”
Margarita, who is a Cypriot national, was a player on the Akaki team. The attack occurred at the end of the game, won by the 15-year-old’s team. “Margarita was attacked when she went to defend a teammate who was hit by a girl from the other team. When Margarita’s coach tried to defend her, he was physically threatened and was pushed out by the mob,” Duku explained.
“At first she was attacked by one of the other team’s players and then suddenly everyone pounced at her, boys and girls…
“I forgive them because they didn’t know what they were doing. Christmas is a time for forgiveness and if they are real Christians they should know that there is only one God for all people, no matter the colour of their skin. Margarita feels the same pain as any of them would feel if they suffered such a beating.
“When the police arrived, the beating stopped. Margarita was taken into a room for safety and even though the police were there, the mob was kicking the window, trying to break in to get to Margarita,” he said.
“Instead of taking her straight to the hospital, which was only down the road, the police took Margarita back to her school in Akaki and waited for me to go pick her up to take her to the hospital,” Duku said.
Duku took his 15-year-old daughter to the hospital with severe injuries and she was admitted for treatment. Since Thursday night, Margarita has undergone various medical examinations to determine whether there is any damage to any vital organ. No fractures have been diagnosed. According to Duku, Margarita is aching all over and the family do not know when she will be discharged from the Makarios children’s hospital.
“I spoke to the police today and they told me they are still investigating the incident,” Duku said.
According to Doros Polycarpou, leader of immigrant support group KISA, “No one was arrested. No statements were taken. No one was charged.”
KISA held a protest yesterday on Eleftheria Square in an effort to raise awareness about the incident and to stamp out such violence in the future before it takes on even more tragic dimensions.
A statement from KISA described the attack as “one of the most serious crimes concerning racist violence in Cyprus, since the reason of the attack was the young girl’s skin colour…
“Unfortunately, the racist venom has been allowed to poison the souls of a portion of our youth.”
Margarita has five other siblings, 23-year-old Eva, Monica 16, Mallas, the only boy in the family, who is 11, and Chrystalla and Maria aged five and three respectively, who were both born in Cyprus.
Manoah and Elizabeth Duku came to Cyprus from Sudan in August 2001 with their children. “Margarita’s grandfather, my father-in-law, is Cypriot. Margarita spoke Greek and was attending Greek school in Khartoum, Sudan before we moved to Cyprus”.
Duku, who works as a road technician for a well-known Cypriot development enterprise in Libya, came to Cyprus last week to spend Christmas with his family.
“Margarita naturally feels angry over the attack. She thought she was going to die. She was crying for help and no one was around to help her. Over the eight years that we have been here we have been insulted several times for being black but it never got physical,” Duku said.
