MAIN PHOTO: A boat with more than 100 immigrants arrived in Cape Greco on 11/20/2019. [KYPE, F. Zanettou]
By Katerina Iliadis
Through the research of “P” emerge creepy stories: Boats full of children ready to sink but by order of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Nouris the rescuers have to wait for instructions. It may take a day, two or three. The tough Minister of Interior of Cyprus, based on dozens of testimonies, believes that if the immigrants suffer, they will leave. Except for one boat, no one left. Operated children who are in danger of dying, malnourished women, exhausted people from being forced to board boats within the limits of 12 miles of Cypriot territorial waters, is a daily phenomenon. With many Cypriot officials of our state in despair. Some disobeyed explicit orders and were punished. Everyone is ashamed.
The fact that Immigration / Refugee is a very serious and difficult issue, which has evolved / is evolving into a big problem (and) for our country, no one disputes. The issue, however, is its management and the tactics we apply, because it concerns the souls of impoverished people who desperately enter a rotten boat for a better life and others reach land, others drown in the middle of the sea and others are forced to return from where they started. On the one hand is the question “how many can fit in Cyprus” and on the other “what will happen if one day the Cypriot beaches are filled with drowned refugees / immigrants, young and old, due to our mishandling”…
The reality is relentless: The weather has changed, the sea is starting to rise and the sea is freezing, and migratory flows to Cyprus (and elsewhere) continue – about one boat approaches the island every 10 to 15 days – the boats have recently thickened that come to us.
About 90 informal migrants found on a boat in Cape Greco All recorded
Talking to too many professionals but also to refugees / informal migrants, unfortunately, reveals a creepy way in which the Minister of the Interior sometimes thinks and acts, but also in some key positions that deal with the issue – a way that can at any time expose irreparably our place, while in some cases -as we were told- it pushes professionals even in their self-abolition and may endanger human lives.
Their whole life in a nylon bag
“They dress in their best clothes, flirtatious, to go, they think, to the Promised Land. With their best jeans, their best shoes, and they come with a nylon bag. Their whole life in a nylon bag. That includes their mobile phone, their personal documents (identity card if they have etc.), and a T-shirt. Some people wear the well-known American… hats that are fashionable. After 2-3 days in the sea, young and old become old – they are all so crowded in the boats, that in that whole mess the babies lose their clothes and their socks and their shoes and remain half-naked and barefoot ». Eyewitness description.
More about the issue in the printed version of “P” and for the subscribers of POLITIS PREMIUM the digital version of the newspaper in PDF at the same time with its printed circulation daily from 05.00 in the morning.
