By Martin Hellicar
THE BRITISH bases are hell bent on destroying the Cypriot countryside, Diko deputy Marios Matsakis claimed yesterday.
Not only did he have “information” that British troops were to resume live- fire exercises in the Akamas, but a “huge” track of unique salt lake habitat at Akrotiri was being obliterated to make way for five new British army antennae, Matsakis told the House environment committee.
“The English are trying to destroy our environment wherever they can,” the deputy, known for his anti-bases sentiments, concluded.
Committee chairman Demetris Eliades confirmed that the British were to stage war games in the Akamas in January and February. Eliades said the British had rejected all the alternative exercise sites which the government had proposed after repeated protests, from greens and the House, against the use of the Akamas.
Bases spokesman Rob Need confirmed to the Cyprus Mail that exercises were to take place in the Akamas. He said efforts to find an alternative site were “progressing”.
The British army secured the right to train in the Akamas under the 1960 treaty establishing Cyprus’s independence.
Matsakis is a veteran of many protests against the Akamas exercises, often grabbing the headlines by intruding into restricted zones during the war games, but his main gripe yesterday was the development at the Akrotiri salt lake.
“The English cannot be allowed to destroy the salt lake just because it is within the bases,” he said, pointing out that the lake and its environs was home to many rare plants and birds.
Limassol District officer Christakis Athanasiou told the committee that a 40 to 50 donum area of salt marsh on the North side of the lake proper had been cleared for five new antennae. Athanasiou said the bases had carried out an environmental impact study for the development in consultation with relevant government departments. But he said he had only been given a copy of it on Monday – and then only after he had made repeated requests to see it.
Need later dismissed Matsakis’s assault on the bases’ environmental record as “political rhetoric”.
“Our environmental record is absolutely clean,” he told the Mail. The spokesman said the new antennae were to replace an old one already on site and added that the relevant impact study had been released to all government departments on Monday, even though the bases were under no obligation to do so.
But the representatives of government departments present at the committee protested that they had never set eyes on the impact study.
“We were never officially informed on these activities,” Tassos Gionnis of the Foreign Ministry said.
Gionnis conceded that the bases did not need the government’s authorisation for military works within the base area, and the Forestry department representative said the development would cause “no serious damage” to salt lake plant communities.
But Eliades said the bases’ actions were unacceptable. “When the British need information for their study they go to the government, but where they are obliged to respect and consult with the authorities and citizens of the Republic before making decisions they do not do it. They must get the message that colonialism has ended,” he said.
Matsakis said the antennae would be a major hazard for migratory birds: “Birds travel thousands of miles from Siberia to the Limassol salt lake to be killed a few metres before they land just because the English want to transmit messages.”
Akel deputy Kyriacos Tyrimos said it was unfair to single out antennae erected by the British as avian death traps when birds were being killed in mist nets all over the island.
Matsakis also claimed the antennae posed a serious health risk for residents of nearby Akrotiri village. It was all part of a British plot to force the villagers to abandon their homes, he told the committee.
“Many Akrotiri villagers have gone deaf because the English fly over very low to scare them from their homes.”
