By Anthony O. Miller
CHINESE student Li Yun, who has spent eleven days in a Cyprus prison cell, was released yesterday. But she could still be tried on charges of allegedly working illegally in a Cyprus pub where it’s suspected she was the victim of a trap to lure her into prostitution.
Li Yun, aged 20, was released from jail on the orders of Interior Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou and Acting Immigration Officer Kyriacos Triantafyllides, following the request of her lawyer Yiannakis Erotocritou, who is also the Philippines Consul to Cyprus.
“The (Migration) Police are still pressing charges against her, for reasons best known to themselves,” Erotocritou said. Ultimately, he added, Attorney- general Alecos Markides would have to decide whether to prosecute her in court.
Erotocritou said he hoped Markides would use his discretion in the young woman’s favour, since she was deceived by her employer into believing that he had got her a permit to wait at tables in his pub.
Li Yun told the Cyprus Mail yesterday about what happened at a November birthday in the pub for a fellow Chinese student, which led to her working there. Several people close to her believe she was the victim of a scheme to trap young women, for either cheap, disposable labour or blackmailing into prostitution.
It is claimed that the pub owner staged the appearance of an ‘immigration man’ at his pub when Li Yun and four of her Chinese college classmates went to the party, accompanied by another older man who was also a friend of the pub owner.
Li Yun naively followed the instructions of this ‘immigration man’, giving the pub owner her passport and student visa. Later, she said, she believed the pub owner when he said the ‘immigration man’ had helped get her a work permit and she started work, earning £12 a night.
Fatefully, genuine Immigration Police arrested Li Yun on December 4 while she waited on tables — she did not have the “promised” work permit.
One source, who said he feared underworld reprisal if he were identified, said the pub owner, the older man who came to the pub with the Chinese students and the ‘immigration man’ were obviously working together to trap Li Yun and other young women into prostitution.
He alleged that she would ultimately have been given a choice between working as a prostitute or being reported to the Immigration Police — to be deported — for waiting at tables in the pub without a genuine work permit.
Erotocritou said he agreed with this analysis of Li Yun’s plight, adding that pending the decision on her trial she would resume her studies in hotel management in Nicosia.
