Almost two months to the day after she became stranded in no man’s land in Nicosia, Mimi wants to go home. In her case, home means Cameroon, not the Republic of Cyprus, which lies meters away, or any other place in Europe.
“I’ve seen everything here, snakes, rats, you name it and now I just want to go back to my country, back to Cameroon,” says the 29-year-old.
The Cameroonian is among 53 asylum seekers to have been “pushed back” into the UN-patrolled buffer zone that bisects Cyprus, the EU’s easternmost member and last divided state.
Since 15 May , when she was escorted by police to Gas Bottle Gate, the entry point into the zone, she has been stuck in limbo: unable to move left, which would take her into the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, or right, which would return her to the Turkish-occupied north, a breakaway state deprived of any infrastructure to lodge asylum requests.
For the Cameroonian and other refugees from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan, home is now a tent in a former swamp infested by mosquitoes, wild flies and rats. In the sweltering summer heat, with temperatures almost daily exceeding 40C (104F), aid workers have described the situation as intolerable.
In a highly unusual move diplomatic delegations from 12 Nicosia-based western embassies will on Thursday visit the makeshift camp amid rumours of the asylum seekers being relocated elsewhere. The last time people seeking asylum got marooned in Cyprus, Pope Francis intervened ensuring they were relocated to Italy.
“Every day I wish to God I could leave,” says Mimi, a victim of human trafficking. “I left [the north] to escape the men wanting to have their way with me but never did I imagine ending up in a place like this.”
Exacerbated by the island’s complex reality of being partitioned by war, with its Greek and Turkish communities living either side of a ceasefire line since 1974, international concern over the group’s fate has mounted.
As numbers have swelled – a second buffer zone camp has also been set up to accommodate other trapped asylum seekers in Akaki 22km west of Nicosia – the UN refugee agency has voiced growing alarm.
Among the stranded are not only trafficked women but children and survivors of cancer.
Eight of the 53, described as Syrian nationals and including two unaccompanied minors, have already disappeared. At least half of them went missing after fleeing the demilitarised zone and attempting to file asylum requests in Pournara, the island’s refugee reception centre before being discovered, pushed back into no man’s land for a second time and escaping again.
With arrivals showing no sign of abating – four more people from Iran and Nigeria were intercepted attempting to cross over from the north at the weekend – the UNHCR has called for urgent action.
“These people need to have their asylum claims examined as guaranteed under EU law,” said Emilia Strovolidou, the UN agency’s spokesperson. “This situation of being stuck in limbo is not viable and we need to see a viable solution for them.”
The European Commission has also said that, as an EU member state, Cyprus is obliged under the bloc’s binding laws to accept applications for international protection whether made “at its border or in a transit zone”.
“What we are seeing is nothing short of shameful, nothing short of a crime,” said Nicos Trimikliniotis, a professor of sociology at the university of Nicosia who heads the EU Fundamental Rights Agency’s team of experts in Cyprus. It was inadmissible, he said, that asylum seekers were being kept in such deplorable conditions when the island’s camp in Pournara was almost empty.
“By refusing to recognise people so worthy of asylum the government thinks it will send a message that will deter others from coming,” he added. “It is an ill-conceived idea that has led to blatant violation of fundamental rights.”
Forced to survive on donations from the Red Cross, canned food provided by the state and military rations usually given to UN peacekeeping forces in combat zones, the stranded asylum seekers say their “physical and psychological condition” is deteriorating fast.
“A lot of us, especially the women are very depressed,” said Ibrahim, a 24-year-old from Sudan, swatting a fly as he sat under a eucalyptus tree. “The war started and I had no choice but to leave Khartoum. I wanted to go to a place where I felt safe and I got a visa to study in [northern] Cyprus. In Europe I knew there is something called human rights but here, in this jungle, I have had very bad fever, I have felt as if I might die. It would be better to be back in Khartoum.”
Amid a rise in irregular arrivals – more than 2,000 people made the 100-mile sea crossing from Syria in the first three months this year – the government of president Nikos Christodoulides has taken an increasingly hardline stance on an issue believed to have turbocharged the appeal of the far-right ELAM, whose rabidly anti-immigrant rhetoric helped the party win a seat in June’s European elections.
In mid-April Cypriot officials suspended processing the asylum requests of Syrians – a measure that has affected more than 14,000 people – while also stepping up pushbacks at sea. Nicosia has also pressed Brussels to usher in legislation that would declare parts of war-ravaged Syria safe for repatriation.
Reports of African people being rounded up in vans and deported – with the promise of receiving €1,000 (£839.46) handouts upon arrival in their home countries – have also increased. “From the first day we took office, we have taken a holistic approach, with the objective of stopping our country from being considered an attractive destination for migrants,” said Christodoulides, who was catapulted into power in February 2023 as an independent after deserting the centre-right Disy party. In an EU member state that previously had registered the highest number of claims per capita, the deterrence policy has helped reduce the number of asylum requests.
But it has also put Cyprus in the eye of a storm and, it seems, done little to stop the plummeting popularity of the government and its image-conscious leader. “There is widespread disappointment repeatedly reflected in the polls with the government and Christodoulides personally,” said the prominent political analyst Christophoros Christophorou.
“What we are seeing is the president trying to thwart the popularity of the far-right ELAM party by applying its own policies while attempting to satisfy the three parties which support him [in power] that are also anti-immigrant.”
• This article was amended on 26 July 2024 because an earlier version referred to Nicos Trimikliniotis as heading the Fundamental Rights Agency of the EU in Cyprus. In fact he heads the EU Fundamental Rights Agency’s team of experts in Cyprus.
