Asylum seekers disappear from the bases

By Rita Kyriakides

IRAQI asylum seekers who have been causing unrest over the past few days have disappeared from the British Base of Dhekelia where they are housed.

On Monday, a group of illegal immigrants caused havoc by setting fire to two buildings, throwing equipment into the road and cutting down several trees, before being escorted back to their accommodation by bases police.

On Tuesday, the same group of immigrants torched and gutted a building in Richmond village.

Two representatives of the disgruntled asylum seekers met with senior SBA police in an attempt to resolve outstanding issues late on Tuesday.

” The people that were causing the trouble went off in a minibus at around 10pm after the meeting. We think they disappeared into Limassol or Paphos, “bases spokesman Rob Need told the Cyprus Mailyesterday.

According to Need, the bases ” have frequent dialogue with the Cypriot police on this and other matters” .

He said the troublemakers were residents of the Richmond Village on the Dhekelia base and that the immigrants could not be stopped from leaving the bases, as there were no borders, only boundaries.

” They will most likely be back round about the time they get paid,”he said, referring to their monthly welfare payments.

The asylum seekers are demanding that they be allowed to travel and live and work in the UK.

The bases have been holding more than 100 Iraqi and Iraqi Kurd migrants for more than a year. Some have already been granted refugee status, but others still have their applications pending and one group has been turned down.

Many of the migrants arrived on the bases on fishing boats from Lebanon or Syria.

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.