Nearly 30 asylum seekers are trapped in the United Nations-controlled buffer zone between Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus and the internationally recognized south amid a crackdown by Cypriot authorities on undocumented migration following a sharp rise in Syrians leaving. They arrive from Lebanon.
The groups (13 people from Syria and 14 from the Middle East, Africa and Asia) are located in different locations in the buffer zone, which stretches about 112 miles across Cyprus, a Mediterranean nation that is a member of the Union. European, and divides the continent. capital, Nicosia. They arrived on foot to the area, known as the Green Line, from the occupied north.
If migrants return to the north, an area that covers about a third of the island and is only recognized by Turkey, they face deportation because the administration there has no legal infrastructure to provide asylum. Crossing into the buffer zone from the occupied north would also constitute trespassing under that administration and would likely result in deportation.
President Nikos Christodoulides of Cyprus said last week that authorities would provide humanitarian aid to migrants currently in the buffer zone but would not allow them to enter the south for fear of setting a precedent. “We will not allow the creation of a new route for illegal migration,” he told reporters last Tuesday.
As a member of the European Union, Cyprus is responsible for regulating entry to the bloc, and Konstantinos Letymbiotis, a government spokesman, said last month that the country would “continue its effective supervision along the buffer zone.”
But an official at the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said on Tuesday that member states were obliged to allow asylum applications, even in the buffer zone. Commission Home Affairs spokesperson Anitta Hipper said in a statement that “the possibility for any person to apply for international protection on the territory of a Member State, including at its border or in a transit zone, is established in the EU legislation”.
Migrants in the buffer zone crossed into it in two groups over the past three weeks, according to Emilia Strovolidou, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency in Cyprus, who expressed concern about their fate amid sweltering temperatures. They predict they will exceed 100 degrees. Fahrenheit this week.
“These people left their countries in search of safety and a better life, and now they are trapped,” he said. “And we have a heat wave ahead of us.”
One of the children in the group, a 13-year-old boy, was taken to a hospital in Nicosia after suffering “psychological problems”, and cases of dizziness and nausea from the heat are a daily occurrence, he said.
Toilets and showers have been installed, Strovolidou said, and aid workers and United Nations peacekeepers, who have been stationed in the buffer zone since it was created in 1974, after the island was effectively divided between its Turkish and Greek communities.
But migrants cannot live indefinitely in tents in the middle of a demilitarized zone, Strovolidou said, adding that the United Nations agency had pressured Cypriot authorities to grant them asylum.
Thousands of Syrians have left Lebanon this year as that country suffers severe economic hardship and tensions rise over neighboring Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. And international aid for Syrians, whose country has been mired in civil war for more than 13 years, has dwindled as more recent conflicts have drawn the world’s attention.
In mid-April, President Christodoulides said Cyprus was freezing the processing of Syrians’ asylum applications amid a sharp increase in arrivals from Lebanon. More than 2,000 undocumented migrants arrived in the country by sea in the first three months of the year, compared with 78 in the same period last year, according to Cypriot government figures.
The freeze on asylum processing has left more than 14,000 Syrians in Cyprus in limbo, many of whom have been waiting for a response to their asylum claims for more than a year, according to Ms Strovolidou.
The majority have the right to food and housing in Cyprus, although they do not have the right to work. Under the April decision, anyone who returned to Syria in the past 12 months through Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus is no longer entitled to international protection and faces deportation.
Cypriot authorities have also sent ships to patrol the area between Cyprus and Lebanon. And when Christodoulides accompanied Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, on a visit to Lebanon in early May, the European official promised aid of 1 billion euros, or $1.08 billion, to help the country’s economy. Lebanon and combat human trafficking.
Those actions have helped curb arrivals into Cyprus via the sea route, but appear to have led to increased activity across the Green Line, which in turn led Cypriot authorities to assign more border guards to the cushioning.
Migrants have been stranded in the buffer zone in previous years, but not in such numbers, according to aid workers. In one case, in 2021, two Cameroonians were stuck in the buffer zone for seven months until they were relocated to Italy after a visit by Pope Francis to Cyprus.
Strovolidou pointed out that immigrants who manage to cross to the south are accepted in state centers and asked for help for those who are in the buffer zone. “They don’t know what’s happening or how long they’ll be stuck there,” he said. “They are in limbo.”