One in eight artistes marries a Cypriot

ONE in eight cabaret artistes coming to work on the island marries to a Cypriot, while there are around 1,200 civil weddings between local men and foreign women every year, compared to 70 marriages between Cypriot women and foreign men, the House Human Rights Committee heard yesterday.

Immigration officer Costas Pilavas, told the committee there were 78 cabarets operating on the island and employing 1,000 artistes, and 38 nightclubs employing 270 artistes.

Pilavas said around 3,500 to 4,000 artistes came to Cyprus every year, while there were 22 agents and 92 employment bureaus dealing solely with finding foreign workers.

The committee yesterday continued discussion on the human rights violations of local and foreign women used to provide sex.

Assistant police chief Soteris Charalambous said there were few actual reports of physical abuse, exploitation or pimping of foreign women working in Cyprus, stressing the difficulties women faced in filing reports of abuse or exploitation.

Charalambous said all cabarets had installed surveillance cameras to check who went in and out, including police officers.

Between 1999 and 2002, there were 26 reported cases of physical abuse, 14 cases of exploitation at the workplace and 24 cases of pimping.

The representative of artistes’ agents, Andreas Pirillos, said there had been cases of artistes who got married six months or a year after arriving on the island.

The spokesman for the Union of Municipalities insisted all civil weddings were carried out legally and that all foreigners needed to have a sworn statement certified by a court in their country that they were not married.

In 2002, Nicosia Municipality carried out 53 mixed weddings, and 23 so far this year.

But the record is held by the Aradhippou Municipality in Larnaca, with 5,000 mixed civil in five years.

Aradhippou mayor Christakis Lyberis said 90 per cent of the weddings conducted at his town hall involved Russian Jews who came to Cyprus to get married because they could not get a civil wedding in Israel.

The committee asked the Union to provide all information on civil weddings conducted since 1998.

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