Ministering to one's more racist instincts

Opinion by Sunday Mail 18 March 2001

The experts reported that the force was in need of a major reorganisation, restructuring, decentralisation and a change of mentality; they also recommended that the senior ranks should be the preserve of officers with university degrees. Nothing of what the experts said should have come as a major surprise, especially the need for a change of mentality which is all too obvious to anyone who has come into contact with policemen.

Of course you cannot blame ordinary policemen for their mentality when the ethos of the force is no different from the one that existed when the republic was established 40 years ago. In those days the policeman was all-powerful and concepts such as human rights and personal liberty were unheard of. It was a time when Cyprus was, effectively, run like a police state in which the government as well as individual ministers had absolute power over citizens and officers obeyed no rules or laws. Things have changed since then, especially after a few well-publicised cases of police brutality, with more and more citizens standing up for their rights.

Yet the old mentality, essentially, remains unchanged. This is evident in police treatment of impoverished foreigners -- be they maids from Sri Lanka or the Philippines, labourers from Middle East countries or suspected prostitutes from the former Soviet Union. These people have no rights in the eyes of the police and are often victims of arbitrary decisions and inhuman treatment by policemen. An employer only has to file a complaint against a domestic servant and the police will have her deported in next to no time. In such disputes, the only version of events accepted by the police is that of the Cypriot employer. As for illegal immigrants or foreign workers whose visas have expired, they are often held in custody, without appearing in court, until they are deported, a process which might take several weeks.

In the past few weeks, the police have been involved in several incidents in their pursuit of illegal immigrants, which suggest that old habits die hard. Ten days ago police officers at the airport refused entry to a pregnant Bulgarian woman married to a Cypriot, convinced that this was a marriage of convenience. She was taken to hospital, where she was kept under police guard, but her husband took her home. She was arrested from the home and deported the following morning. A few weeks earlier police raided a Nicosia bar on the pretext of looking for drugs and illegal immigrants, and after scuffles arrested 23 customers. Sixteen were found to be illegal immigrants. This week, they entered the Limassol apartment in which a Russian tourist, suspected of working as a prostitute, was staying. They found nothing to suggest the woman was working as a prostitute, but found a second woman at the flat whose visa had expired.

Also this week police warned hotels that they will carry out regular checks to ensure that they are not employing foreigners illegally. This follows the decision to check attendance registers at tertiary education colleges, on a weekly basis, to ensure no students are missing from class because they are working illegally. As for college students caught working, they do not even get a warning -- they are automatically deported, their education abruptly terminated by the police.

While the police could be accused of excessive zeal -- a zeal that is in violation of human rights -- in pursuing illegal workers, the politicians are not without blame. The Minister of Justice, who is in charge of the force, and the Interior Minister, who has made it his life's objective to rid Cyprus of illegal immigrants, have condoned (if not actively encouraged) the use of these undemocratic methods smacking of racism. In what democratic country do policemen raid a bar and scuffle with customers because they suspect the presence of illegal immigrants, or break into an apartment because they suspect a tourist to be a prostitute? Yet we have not heard one single word of censure over these violations of privacy from any of their political superiors. In fact the state views all low-income foreigners as suspects and cannot even guarantee them the basic human right of equality before the law. As for the treatment of foreign students, we should be ashamed as a society for making their life here so difficult.

The government, in its attempts to clamp down on illegal foreign workers, has actively encouraged police state methods and practices against foreigners. In most democratic countries this would be described as institutionalised racism. For the police force, behaving in the way it does is part of its mentality, but we would have expected the politicians to stop such methods instead of encouraging them.

Above article, from a Greek Cypriot newspaper, shows how brutal and racist the Greek Cypriot police force is. If they treat the above mentioned people in such manner, one can understand how they treat Turkish Cypriots they abduct from time to time and the Turkish Cypriot journalist who are considered to be spies. Compare to the Greek Cypriot side, not a single Greek Cypriot journalist has ever been mistreated by the Turkish Cypriot side. When they cross the border they freely do their duties as journalists.

Apart from the journalist the Turkish Cypriots who work in South Cyprus are also treated as spies. They are continiously watched by the Greek Cypriot police.