Deputy Migration Minister Nicholas Ioannides said on Thursday that Cyprus isn’t conducting pushbacks. He additionally addressed accusations of far-right help, describing them as “malicious” and stemming from his connection to the Mari catastrophe.
Ioannides, whose household was affected by the explosion, instructed Alpha Information, “As a result of as households we got here ahead in response to this nice disaster and the lack of our personal folks, this response was seen as excessive or far-right.”
“Those that know me perceive that this isn’t the case, I’ve by no means been a member of any political celebration or a politician; I used to be centered on my educational pursuits,” he clarified.
Ioannides subtly accused the left-wing opposition celebration Akel, which was in energy in the course of the catastrophe.
Requested about his adverse view of fixing the Cyprus drawback by means of a federation, Ioannides skirted the query utterly, saying that his focus is on his duties as assigned by the president.
Commenting on migration and on the barbed wire alongside the Inexperienced Line, Ioannides mentioned that he’s full settlement with the president and all related ministries on the matter.
“It isn’t in regards to the views of every head, it’s in regards to the authorities’s programme and we are going to implement it, each probably leaving his private mark,” he mentioned.
On the migrants stranded within the buffer zone and associated points with Unficyp, he said he wanted extra info earlier than commenting however reiterated, “There are not any pushbacks; the Republic of Cyprus is a state ruled by the rule of legislation.”
Commenting on his ministry, he mentioned: “We are going to keep up a correspondence with the minister of schooling for the scholars and the minister of social welfare for the unaccompanied minors, since our effort might be to make sure that these people who find themselves entitled to remain right here completely are built-in easily into Cypriot society, in order to not create phenomena of ghettoisation, crime, and so forth.
The UNHCR has expressed considerations in regards to the shrinking safety house in Cyprus, citing authorities measures affecting Syrian refugees and asylum-seekers, together with the suspension of asylum software processing since mid-April, impacting over 14,000 Syrian asylum seekers.
UNHCR additionally added that it has witnessed the “resumption of arrests, generally involving drive, of asylum-seekers trying to submit subsequent purposes, aiming to topic them to return proceedings.”
Moreover, it added, current months have seen a number of studies of interceptions and “subsequent pushbacks of boats carrying asylum-seekers trying to succeed in Cypriot shores.”
The UNHCR outline pushbacks as: “Numerous measures taken by states which lead to migrants, together with candidates for worldwide safety, being summarily pressured again to the nation from the place they tried to cross or have crossed a global border with out entry to worldwide safety or asylum procedures or denied of any particular person evaluation on their safety wants which can result in a violation of the precept of non-refoulement.”
