A 28-YEAR-OLD Syrian asylum seeker detained at the Central Prison’s Block 10 attempted to commit suicide yesterday morning, police have confirmed.
According to the police press office, the man attempted to take his own life using a strip of his bed sheet to hang himself.
“This man has been detained for more than a year now and he wants to go back to Syria but they will not deport him; they won’t deport him but they won’t release him either,” said lawyer Michalis Paraskevas, who has clients in Block 10.
Block 10 is a wing in the Central Prisons where failed asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are held with a view to deporting them. Currently, there are about 65 people in custody there.
According to Paraskevas, this man has attempted suicide so many times that police have nicknamed him ‘Chlorine’ as his usual method is to swallow chlorine. “He has been in the hospital over ten times,” he said.
Earlier this week a 30-year-old detainee tried to harm himself using a plastic knife. He is now being treated in Athalassa hospital for psychological problems, according to police, who referred to both these cases as ‘minor’. Paraskevas was informed though that the detainee cut himself in front of CCTV cameras in order to send a message, until he was stopped by police. He had also attempted suicide again 40 days before with a knife.
The law states that the detainees can only be held in Block 10 and other detention centres for six months and when they must either be released or deported.
Asked about why many of these detainees do not appeal once the six months is up Paraskevas said that many of them are not aware of their rights even though it is the Interior Ministry’s, and other bodies’ responsibility to ensure that asylum seekers are informed.
Paraskevas said that he hears of stories such as these all too often.
“I know of an Iranian man who was in there from November 2007, for three years then they released him only to arrest him again.”
The unsuitability of many of these detention centres has come under mounting criticism, especially after a 28-year-old Georgian illegal immigrant was found dead in his cell at Lakatamia police detention centre two weeks ago. At the time DISY MP Ioanas Nicolaou questioned whether these detention centres were appropriate for detainees held there for long periods of time, saying that these centres were meant only for short-term detention. Nicolaou cited the centres in Lakatamia and Ayios Ioannis in Limassol as ones that had been used for long-term detention, in conditions that he described as totally unacceptable.
Immigrant support group KISA’s director Doros Polycarpou echoed a similar sentiment saying that Cyprus’ detention centres are not “proper for long-term custody” and even though they build new ones they are “worse than the old ones”.
Paraskevas also said that on October 24 a group of 52 detainees embarked on a hunger strike to protest the length of time they have been held.
Paraskevas stressed that they are not on strike because of ill-treatment by the police there, but simply because they have been held there for longer than the law permits.
However, police could not confirm the existence of an official hunger strike, saying only that there were about 20 detainees who had been refusing to eat the food provided for them at the centre, but that they were eating food that visitors brought for them.
