Outcry of Russian woman

THE IMMIGRATION Support Action Group (ISAG) has called on the ombudswoman to investigate the police immigration unit, its president said yesterday. His comments came in the wake of allegations of the gross mistreatment of a disabled Russian woman at the hands of the police.
A 63-year-old Russian woman was recently deported while trying to extend her residency permit. According to Politis newspaper, Valentina Epp, who suffers from health complications, including kidney and blood pressure problems, was not only arrested, jailed and deported from Cyprus, but was also allegedly persecuted, verbally abused and deceived by police officers during her deportation procedure. She was also deported without being told why and sent home without her luggage and personal documents.
Doros Polycarpou accused the unit of distorting the truth in ways that often led to wrongful deportations by the Immigration Department.
“There has been no improvement; in fact it has only gotten worse,” he said.
Polycarpou says police officers should not be responsible for preparing foreigners’ reports because they are “racist” and often fail to give migration officers the full picture.
“Because the migration officer has been given the wrong information, people are frequently deported for the wrong reasons,” he said.
“(Epp’s) is not the first such case nor is it the most tragic one,” said Polycarpou. “This happens all the time and we have asked the ombudswoman to investigate the way the immigration unit treat foreigners.”
Polycarpou added he knew of cases where immigration police had left sections out of foreigners’ statements and distorted the truth. “Some people asked for political asylum and when the police asked them how they would support their families, they said they would work. What the authorities then did was to leave out the part about seeking political asylum and in their report wrote the foreigners planned to work here.”
To avoid this from happening in future, he said that ISAG has suggested police powers on immigration issues be reduced. Instead police officers should only follow orders that are handed out by the immigration department and not conduct their own investigations.
Polycarpou added that ISAG had also sent letters of complaint, calling for an investigation into the situation, to the Interior and Justice Ministers, which the group plans to publish at the end of the summer.
Nevertheless, the Interior Minister, Andreas Christou, said that the police chief had already launched an investigation into the latest fiasco and noted President Tassos Papadopoulos had also been briefed on the matter.
Christou said the law would be upheld most strictly and that those responsible would be made to answer. “Some people think they can denigrate the state. This cannot continue,” he said.
Although police confirmed the case had been “looked into”, they were yesterday unable to give any more details on the investigation’s outcome.

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.