Most migrants are eating again

By Charlie Charalambous

SOLIDARITY among the hunger striking boat people seems to be at a low ebb, with police confirming yesterday that a majority of them had eaten lunch.

Seventy of the 103 migrants holed up at the Pefkos hotel in Limassol, began a hunger strike on Monday in protest against government plans to deport them.

But the resolve of the Arabs and Africans – who were rescued half-starved from the drifting Rida Allah on June 29 – is petering out, as the hunger pangs bring back bad memories of their ordeal at sea.

“Half of the hunger strikers went down for lunch and the other half went down for dinner,” a Limassol police spokesman said yesterday.

He added that “everyone seems to be eating okay.”

Most of the remaining 103 boat people, including eight children and two pregnant women, want to stay in Cyprus or be given save passage to a third country.

The government has so far said three of the migrants would be granted asylum, though not in Cyprus, and is determined to deport or repatriate the rest. Ten Syrians have already been flown back home.

Limassol police said that no further deportations took place yesterday.

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.