AKEL awaits answers on the surveillance of the “Green Line” issue

Statement by AKEL MP Aristos Damianou after the meeting of the Parliamentary Legal Affairs Committee

11 May 2022

As far as the issue concerning the management of migratory flows and the request essentially by the Ministry of Interior through the Ministry of Justice for the possible hiring of 300 people for the surveillance of the “Green Line” is concerned, I would like to say the following:

It is obvious that the Republic of Cyprus is called upon to manage increased migratory flows, an issue that we have discussed and analyzed at length in the Parliamentary Internal Affairs Committee. Today the Legal Affairs Committee was examining the request from a legal point of view. We therefore raised a number of questions to the relevant Ministries.

We are awaiting answers, but I would like to say that the surveillance of the “Green Line” is a very serious, primarily political issue and in this sense the choices made must respond to this necessity. In other words, the criteria and qualifications must be sufficiently strict to avoid any problems in the future, especially as we are informed that these people will probably normally be armed.

For that reason, these are not issues that we as AKEL will decide lightly, while recognising that some form of increased surveillance of the “Green Line” is required, which must remain a ceasefire line and not be turned in the eyes of foreigners into a hard border within the Republic of Cyprus itself.