Minister urged to keep promise to hunger strikers

IMMIGRANT rights group KISA urged Interior minister Socratis Hasikos on Friday to step in and ensure he kept the promise given to the Kurdish hunger strikers whom he had convinced to stop the strike by saying he would prioritise their citizenship applications.

KISA said it heard “with astonishment” last Wednesday that despite assurances by the civil registry and migration department, that the refugees’ applications have not yet been forwarded to Hasikos, despite his instructions, when he met with the hunger strikers for their applications’ prompt processing.

“Following the minister’s suggestion, they stopped the hunger strike, while at the same time they filed for citizenship,” KISA said.

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.