A documentary on migration in Cyprus reveals immigrant workers are being exploited even at the highest level
IT IS not often that a daring voice is raised to reveal the humanitarianly corrupt sink that Cyprus can sometimes make itself famous for. This is exactly what Christopher Malipatan did. A young visual arts graduate, Chris’ force as a mediator for the countless voiceless people living in Cyprus came through once he picked up a camera.
Born and raised in Kuwait, with British and Philippino origins, Chris was the ideal candidate to document the migrant situation in Cyprus. His debut documentary, Where Shall I Go? explores the way in which a migrant constitutes home away from home. Through an oral testimony based around an anonymous young migrant woman, the premise was to explore the experiences faced by her and the more latent implications of the mistreatment of migrants in this island state. The documentary was part of a wider ethnographic study of the Mediterranean Voices Project, funded by the EU.
“I wanted to show that these migrants are faceless, but have very strong voices – that’s what I wanted to put across. Their stories are all very different, all very unique.” Chris explains how migrants, and asylum seekers in particular, have to pay out large sums of money to enter Cyprus and to find a means to stay here. In some cases, up to £12,000 is raked in by lawyers, smugglers and middlemen. One has to wonder at the desperation faced by such migrants forced to leave their homes, families, country, land and even their children in order to elicit some sort of immunity. “How desperate would you have to be to leave all of that,” Chris says. And that is the point of the documentary. For many migrants in Cyprus, their situations are unfortunate. For many their time here is a parenthesis in their lives, a hole in their existence; they are not living here, they are simply waiting.
The documentary reinforces the commonalities of migrant issues as well as discovering the intrinsic differences of people’s life-stories. The point raised by Chris is that these issues are not investigated by mainstream media, they are just brushed aside. Nobody poses the question of what is happening to these migrants; how do they live; what are their problems; how is the system accommodating them? Many deeply disturbing issues reared their head once Chris dug deeper: “The trouble is that I uncovered a lot of things – sexual harassment, labour exploitation, corruption, which actually should be first on the list, because that’s what it all boils down to in the end. The trouble was how I was going to start this and what am I going to concentrate on.” The start of the documentary renders a powerfully raw and poignant depiction of just one aspect of the inherent abuse of power and corruption that is plaguing these people living on the margins of society.
In the film, against a backdrop of the quaint, humble and everyday sights of Nicosia, we hear the narrative of the young woman and how her so-called defence lawyer sexually harassed her. Her simple words and frank tone lend to the torment of her hopeless situation. Off the celluloid circuit, Chris gave further insights into the power relations between migrants with absolutely no human rights in this country, and the people whose job it is to hear and investigate their cases. According to his informants, there are many cases of sexual harassment occurring even within the decrepit buildings of the labour offices themselves.
According to Doros Polykarpou, KISA’s Chairperson, government and legislators are not doing anything about this fundamental abuse of human rights because it is simply not profitable to do so. According to him, the government needs cheap labour. Political parties are certainly not addressing migrant issues as they are used as scapegoats and are an easy target to blame for the deterioration of society. “They do not vote, they are not proper consumers, they are not part of the system,” so it is easy to blame social maladies on migrants.
“I think where this problem stems from is corruption, and that’s a very dangerous topic,” concurs Chris, “but ultimately, this is what it all boils down to, and that’s corruption. It’s a business. To them, they are not migrants, they are foreign workers, they’re slaves, and they’re exploited to the max. Domestic workers are paid two cents an hour, they are overworked, they’re isolated, and its unacceptable how this underworld of corruption is functioning, how well protected they are.” The statistics stand alone in defining the extent and scope of the problem: 11,350 asylum seekers are currently waiting in Cyprus for the examination of their asylum application. Among them, 500 people receive financial support from the Welfare Department, and another 550 persons have permission from the Ministry of Labour to work in the farming and agriculture sector. The remaining 9,500 are struggling on a daily basis for survival. From KISA’s point of view, the system fully supports the exploitation of such asylum seekers, regardless of the legitimacy of their claims. The system and its purposes are symbolic of the decay of our social structure. “A few asylum seekers get welfare,” points out Doros, “but the rest? They are forced to work illegally and can therefore be exploited.”
Chris is highly attuned to the fact that this small documentary has the potential to initiate huge politically-motivated discourse, even though it merely touches the surface of the migrant issue in Cyprus. “I hope this documentary sparks more migrant voices to come forward and speak out, or to release their frustrations in a smart way, to pass their message to ordinary Cypriots, but also to the migrants themselves. That’s one of the things I wanted to reveal – the humanity of the situation. The simple fact that these people are here, we are all living here as well.”
Cyprus has never been a virgin nation; it has always hosted a hybrid of ethnicities, cultures and races. Needless to say, the island has a violent history of repression. For Chris, essentially a migrant himself, the oppression induced on migrants, the hatred, xenophobia and racism stems not from the citizens, but from the system, “it’s how the economics of it work. It is profitable to feed off the blood, sweat and tears of migrant workers.”
The challenge of the documentary went hand in hand with the subject matter. It was also a genre that Chris had not yet fully explored, “I didn’t have a skeleton of how I wanted to put it together; it all fell into place in the editing process, which is the beautiful thing about filmmaking.” The next phase is to co-ordinate with KISA and produce a documentary exploring the theme of labour exploitation on the island. “One of my hopes is that people are willing to accept change, and are willing to listen. I think this is an obstacle – for people to understand the migrants, to hear us out, to join us for dinner, and to be come part of our lives. Because as much as we are a part of your lives, you are a part of ours,” concludes Chris. The next stage for the documentary is to subtitle it in Greek, to screen it at academic institutions and tour the island with KISA to spread awareness and understanding.
