A young boy sits on the ground at the back of the tent, immobile, unresponsive, with his back to us.
“He’s my son, but he has depression,” explains his father.
We’re in the UN buffer zone in the Aglandjia area, close to the University of Cyprus, where the Cyprus Mail and other media were granted access to the 37 asylum seekers (25 here, 12 more in Akaki) who’ve been stranded in the buffer zone for weeks – in some cases, since May 15.
“They’ve been intercepted in their attempt to seek asylum,” explains UNHCR communications officer Emilia Strovolidou.
“They find themselves in limbo, they are in these precarious conditions… And we are asking – the whole UN community is asking – the government of Cyprus to allow these people access to asylum procedures, and access to dignified living conditions.”
The 58-year-old father with the depressed teenage son is Kamaruddin from Afghanistan – one of the latest arrivals, having been deposited here with his wife and children a week ago. Others come from Iran, Sudan, Syria and Cameroon.
Their location is a shaded – but stiflingly humid – wooded area just inside the buffer zone, with a number of large white tents and four portable toilets.
Two of the tents are ‘shower tents’ (one for men, one for women), though there’s no actual shower – just a few wooden pallets where the migrants can sit and wash, scooping water from a bucket with a section of plastic bottle.
Laundry hangs on a line. In a clearing, branches have been planted in the ground to form an ‘X’ and another branch slung between the ‘X’ and a nearby tree, forming a makeshift pull-up bar. Scattered on the ground are a few stray cards from a game of Uno.
Perched against a tree behind the tents is a small cardboard sign with neat handwritten lettering: ‘WE ARE NOT CRIMINALS!!’.
That’s the big question, of course. People tend to be cynical when it comes to migrants – and it’s true that most asylum seekers arrive (by necessity) in illegal ways, paying smugglers to facilitate their entry.
The most striking thing about the group in the buffer zone, however, is – for want of a better word – how middle-class they seem.
Thirty-four-year-old Mudassir, also from Afghanistan, speaks English so fluently he could be mistaken for one of the UN staff. He worked in financial management back in Kabul. Nineteen-year-old Rohi, another member of the Afghan group, claims to speak five languages and is reading The Politics of Paradise – a life of Byron, donated by the Red Cross – to stave off depression.
“I can’t sleep at night,” he explains, “because of the situation.”
Both appear to be among the class of Afghans who’ve been driven from the country by the resurgent Taliban after the US withdrawal, meaning their values are likely to be closer to the West than Islamism.
A well-dressed Iranian family tearfully confirm that impression, having fled – they claim through an interpreter – after being arrested for refusing to wear hijab.
“I’m an educated man,” says 24-year-old Ibrahim (not his real name) in English, saying he had money back in Sudan: “When I was 21 years old I bought a car by myself, with my money… I used to work, and pay for my school and university”. He fled – and can’t go back – to escape the RSF, the paramilitary group that forces young men like him to join their militia.
He was also an artist, he says in passing. He used to paint, and write stories. “But in here I became no-one,” he adds bitterly.
“We are stuck here. There are snakes,” Mimi from Cameroon – who’s been here since mid-May – told the Cyprus Mail. “You wake up, and you have hopes that something is going to happen, and then you go back to bed disappointed.
“Nothing happens… You try to be strong, but you break down.”
It’s not just the conditions – though it’s hot, and there are indeed snakes. (They’ve been told Cyprus snakes are harmless, says Ibrahim, but that’s scant consolation when you worry about stepping on one in the pitch-black of night.) But the real problems are despair and depression – the hopeless feeling of being stuck between a country they can’t go back to and another that refuses to accept them.
“This is something you need to ask the government,” says Strovolidou when asked why the Republic is blocking the asylum seekers.
“What they have said is that there is no obligation because this is a buffer zone. But we know – and this is confirmed also by the European Commission – that EU law applies also in the buffer zone”.
Meanwhile, for the stranded migrants, the ordeal continues.
