AN INCIDENT at the beginning of the year stuck in my mind as a reminder of the uneasy relationship between prickly state organs and civil society.
It was just your average Sunday in late January, with a handful of immigrants and asylum seekers protesting outside the Interior Ministry. Some had been waiting as long as 11 years for the state to answer their application for asylum.
Things turned sour when KISA (migrant support group) front man Doros Polycarpou was arrested for using speakers in public without a licence; a crime punishable with an €85 fine. His arrest sparked off protests from the crowd, who were then set on by the dozen or so undercover police and secret service agents present.
Within hours, footage was uploaded on the internet depicting undercover, hooded cops kicking and punching women, deemed a threat to the state, while their petrified children looked on.
Today’s interior minister, Neoclis Sylikiotis, was also in the crowd, able to get a taste of the overzealous police response. His predecessor Sophocles Sophocleous insisted that it was “job well done” for the police and singled out Polycarpou for giving the Republic a bad image.
The story is memorable for a number of reasons but mainly because the state apparatus arrested the one man who has probably done more for upholding the notion of human rights in Cyprus than anyone else this century. He has been a constant thorn in the side of the state, ensuring that the Republic’s signature on the dozens of international conventions on human rights is worth more than just ink on paper.
In February, immigration police arrested a Filipino lady who had been caring for the disabled cancer patient Antonis Katsaris for five years. During her detention, Katsaris was unable to feed himself, bathe or change clothes. Radiotherapy treatment had left him with little or no eyesight and hearing and limited body movement. The welfare services never once checked on his condition during the two weeks she was detained.
Further investigation revealed that the helper had been issued with deportation orders because Katsaris’ parents did not approve of the intimate relationship the two enjoyed.
A last minute intervention by the interior ministry’s permanent secretary stopped her deportation. It was not the first and it won’t be the last time immigration uses moral criteria to decide on a case with clear legal dimensions.
In May, the same permanent secretary assured me that the authorities would not detain someone for a whole year without charge unless they had good reason. The person in question was a Palestinian man who had been illegally detained by the authorities as a “terror” suspect.
The man who was disabled, as a result of being clubbed and shot by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, was detained on arrival in Cyprus where he planned to apply for asylum. The Israeli authorities assured their Cypriot counterparts he was not considered a risk and that they would even allow his return to Gaza.
Despite that, he was left behind bars for a year, at great mental cost, until the interior ministry finally decided he wasn’t a risk after all.
In the middle of the summer, I got a call at midnight from the Sovereign Base Area police in Dhekelia. My request to follow them on an “immigrant run” had finally come through.
I spent the night watching as the SBA police coordinated with the Cyprus police and British army to locate migrants crossing from the north, through the buffer zone and SBA area into the government-controlled areas.
Two were caught, but more were out there. We stayed until 4am combing the dark patch of land where police spotters on the ground last heard voices. The phrase “needle in a haystack” came to mind, but in this case, with the barn lights switched off. The experience brought to light the anomalous situation on the island with hundreds of migrants every year slipping past Turkish occupation forces, the British bases and Cypriot police. The fact that two migrants were recently injured by mine explosions while crossing the buffer zone also highlights the great risk people take to get here, raising the question, what are they running from?
