One Palestinian and five Greek Cypriot pupils will be charged for the violent clashes that took place at Larnaca’s Vergina High School on Wednesday, Police Spokesman Michalis Katsounotos announced yesterday.
He added that more arrests could follow, as police investigations were ongoing and fresh information was still flowing in.
Katsounotos also condemned an “unsubstantiated claim” that was projected on Facebook on Thursday night saying an attack was being planned against Greek Cypriot pupils yesterday, which resulted in the majority of pupils not turning up to school until just before noon.
He called on everyone to “tone it down and end any acts that only cause more upset”.
The Vergina School was turned into a battlefield on Wednesday, when pupils from other schools arrived and joined forces with around 100 of the school’s children, launching a seemingly unprovoked attack against around 15 Arabic-speaking classmates.
The brawl was said to be connected to the recent attack by Palestinian refugees on Larnaca’s welfare office for delaying their benefit cheques, resulting in one policeman being injured.
Even though five adults will be deported following the welfare office attack, the trouble has been connected to Wednesday’s school fracas – along with violent clashes two months earlier between Rainbow Festival goers and those attending a planned march by a number of civilian groups “to protest the presence of illegal immigrants and the policies promoted for them by the government”.
Referring to the pupils’ arrests, Katsounotos said the Larnaca Police Headquarters’ investigation was in advanced stages.
“A large number of statements have been gathered and the full picture of the conditions and circumstances that led to the events has almost crystallised,” he said.
“From the witness reports we have secured, five Greek Cypriots and one Palestinian will be charged for the incidents that took place at Vergina High School,” said Katsounotos.
“The exact number of people who will be charged is expected to become clear soon, given that police interrogations are continuing and we have added information in relation to the persons implicated.”
Even though the school yesterday returned to operation – pupils abstained from classes on Thursday – a large number of them failed to turn up, attributed to a Facebook warning.
“Police were informed (on Thursday) night that information was circulating on the internet and specifically on Facebook, saying an organised attack was supposedly being planned against Greek Cypriot pupils,” Katsounotos explained.
“This proved to be unsubstantiated. In fact, it seems it was circulated on purpose, considering it was well-known that foreign-speaking pupils would not be going to school (yesterday) to attend classes,” he added.
After the information was officially refuted, Katsounotos said a number of the absent students eventually went to school.
He added that the police, who were discreetly present at Vergina Lyceum yesterday, would continue to monitor the situation to avert any future incidents.
Meanwhile, Education Minister Andreas Demetriou yesterday praised Vergina’s pupils’ mature announcement issued on Thursday, condemning the violence and emphasising that the majority of students were not involved in the incident.
The minister was less effusive about the school’s parents’ association’s decision to distance all Arabic-speaking pupils from the school for 15 days, “until tempers have cooled”.
“Such a course would exacerbate problems, not solve them, and I am calling on the parents to calmly cooperate with us,” said Demetriou.
He said the incident at Vergina Lyceum happened within seconds, leaving teachers with little room to react.
“I would have hoped the school could have acted preventively, but there was intervention from outside and everything happened … in the space of five minutes,” said the minister. But he added that turning schools into fortresses wasn’t the answer.
Earlier in the day, parents’ association head Maria Angelidou – who championed Greek Cypriot pupils’ claims on Wednesday that they had been provoked by the set-upon Palestinian children – said she was confident the crisis was over.
“We have the preliminary exams ahead of us and the children don’t have time to lose,” said Angelidou. “We are doing very well and I feel the whole matter has been resolved.”
Members of the Education Ministry’s rapid intervention team were yesterday at the school all day, consulting with teachers and parents to find solutions to the problem. These actions followed a meeting between the headmaster and parents, to discuss a number of measures announced on Thursday.
A school official yesterday told the Cyprus Mail the measures would not be announced to the media and that the school was trying to deal with the situation internally.
“We are just trying to get the school’s operations back to normal,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Education Ministry has announced it will start intensive Greek language lessons for foreign pupils at the school, which are expected to start in two weeks’ time.
Demetriou said these aimed to better integrate Arabic-speaking children in the school.
