Students protest for Serbian woman’s release

AROUND 400 Paphos B’ Lyceum Kykko students yesterday gathered outside Paphos police station demanding the release of their fellow student’s mother.

The students held banners saying among other things: “Free the mother of our friend, she’s not a criminal… The ombudswoman asked for Jasmina to be set free, is anyone listening?… Let Jasmina go back to her children.”

Jasmina Drazic was separated from her 17-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter by immigration officials last Tuesday because she had overstayed her visa.

The two children who have attended public schools since they arrived in Cyprus in 1999 have been left parentless since their mother’s arrest. Their father was deported in September after immigration officials refused to renew the parents’ visas.

The student demonstration – the second of its kind – took place at 12 noon and ended 45 minutes later. During that time a group of students met with Paphos administration assistant police chief Yiannakis Vassiliou who said, although the matter was not in his jurisdiction but in that of the Interior Ministry, he would do everything in his power to help see Jasmina released.
The students promised Vassiliou further action if Jasmina’s detention continued.

On Monday the ombudswoman called on immigration authorities to release the Serbian woman as her detention was not in the best interest of the children and was in violation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

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.