Each to…their “border”! – Article by Lazaros Nikolaou, member of the Secretariat of the AKEL Nicosia-Kyreneia District Committee

 

 

Saturday 5 November 2022, “Haravgi” newspaper

Despite the richness of the Greek language, it is often difficult to find the exact words to describe the incompetence and dangerous nature of the Anastasiades – DISY government. For that reason, you resort to the wisdom expressed by numerous sayings of the common people. How else can one describe the actions of the official government of the Republic of Cyprus to construct and install barbed wire fences in the free areas seemingly to stop the migration flows?

What is infuriating is that they are trying, by wagging their finger, to suggest to those who disagree with their policies that it is their patriotic duty to consent, even hinting that anyone who opposes them is in roughly the same fate as smugglers and migrant traffickers.

I will not even bother to explain how a group of refugees will have no difficulty getting through a barbed wire fence or a barrier door.

As for the political messages being sent – both inside and outside Cyprus – by the installation of barbed wire on the southern side of the “Green Line”, they are indeed glaring! After all, the current government’s partitionist intentions has long been evident (see the collapse of the Crans Montana talks on Cyprus 2017 and onwards).

The government ruling forces present to affected citizens the difficulties they will face as isolated and collateral. With the fencing and barbed wire where affected citizens have been “cut out”, to the north, residences, industries and thousands of square kilometres of arable land that are daily being watered first with the sweat and toil, then with water, sometimes even with bloody sacrifices. It is they, the citizens, who, after the black July 1974, brought life back to the “buffer zone”, making it once again an integral part of the Republic of Cyprus.

They, the citizens, are the ones who are called upon to live a new daily life with mobile applications, codes and applications so the gate can open… The paradox is that these very citizens often come face to face with the Turkish occupying force in order to defend their right to private property, which for us is something more than self-evident.

Their only support for years has been the government of the day and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the countless petitions and representations to the United Nations.

Now these affected citizens see on the one hand the Minister of the Interior acting with the instinct of self-preservation trying to hold on to power with DISY President and presidential candidate Averof Neophytou.

On the other hand, they see Nikos Christodoulides, the Foreign Minister at the time when the installation of barbed wire started, strolling around and smiling all the time to get votes.

In the end, however, everyone’s actions, for which they are judged, are commensurate with their stature, political, ideological and historical.

“Borders”, then: WE in Karavostasi, in Kormakitis, in Kyrenia, THE OCCUPIER in Zodia, in Katokopia, in Vlora and THE INTERIOR MINISTER NOURIS in Astromeriti, Peristerona and Akaki…