By Anthony O. Miller
CYPRUS has granted political asylum to 11 boat people, all of them Kurds, who were among 113 boat people rescued in June from a stricken Syrian trawler.
“The asylum was given by our government… We accepted the recommendations of the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees),” as to the 11 Kurds’ eligibility for asylum, Costas Papamichael, a Migration Department official, said yesterday.
The 11 were among 49 of the boat people housed at government expense in the three-star Pefkos Hotel in Limassol since their rescue in June. They left the hotel on Tuesday for other lodgings, including “a house near our hotel, ” Andreas Polycarpou, accountant for the Pefkos Hotel, said yesterday.
“The police were there, and the people from the Welfare Department (on Tuesday) to try to help them with their new accommodations,” Papamichael said.
Their departure left 38 of the boat still living in the Pefkos, Polycarpou said. Another 36 of the original 113 remain in the old Famagusta detention centre, and two others are being held in a nearby jail, Larnaca police said yesterday.
The remainder of the original 113 are believed to have been deported to their countries of origin, police sources indicated yesterday.
Before the 11 won asylum this week, UNHCR sources had indicated all those boat people in Larnaca police detention and 40 of the 49 at the Pefkos were unlikely to receive asylum, and faced deportation as “economic refugees”. This week’s government action changes that picture slightly.
“There are some (asylum application) cases that are still pending, as far as I know from the UNHCR officer,” Papamichael said. “We have to wait for the people who are conducting the investigations” before determining what to do with them.
Welfare Director Lula Theodorou said yesterday the 11 asylum recipients “are entitled to public assistance and rent allowance until they are able to get jobs. So we shall assist them to find accommodation and give them all their rights from public assistance until they are able to work.”
“They have to apply to the Labour Office (for work). Of course their social worker will help them to go there and advise them. But it is something which is within the competence of the Labour Office.”
The amount of public assistance money granted “depends on the number of people living in the same family, and it depends on their special needs,” Theodorou said. “It’s not the same for every person. They are individually assessed, and the amount varies from person to person.”
Those granted asylum included four females: Gazal Zak, 31, Rangin Zak, 6, Almaza Hasan, 20, and Noiros Ali, 2; and seven males: Ayaz Mirani, 16, Mohamed Zak 12, Sadri Zak, 10, Farhad Ali, 30, Metan Ali, 2, Mohammed Hanif Al Bream, 31, and Koshman Algey, 31.
Bream, a talented artist, drew half-a-dozen water-coloured Christmas cards, one of which contained a letter written by Emad Otih on behalf of those Pefkos Hotel boat people who did not win asylum, and which was addressed to the President, the Attorney-general and the Interior Minister.
The letter acknowledged the efforts of Cyprus government and public to care for them since their rescue, and expressed their desire “to celebrate the joy of this season with thanks to all the Cypriots” who had helped them.
It also formally asked President Glafcos Clerides, Attorney-general Alecos Markides and Interior Minister Dinos Michaelides “to kindly look into out situation and render possible assistance that could lead to our freedom.” And it wished them “a very merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.”
Markides has opened two probes into allegations of police brutality against the boat people in Cyprus custody. One stemmed from a police beating in August of many of the 113 boat people when they were in the Pefkos Hotel. Another is examining a savage police assault in October on 48 of the boat people who had been moved to the old Famagusta detention facility. Markides has not released any results from either of the two investigations.
