NICOSIA —
Cyprus’s frozen conflict is providing fertile ground for human traffickers with
cases at “alarming” levels in the EU member state, and the breakaway north is
considered as bad as Afghanistan.
اضافة اعلان
“I love her, but
at the same time she reminds me about my past,” said one Cameroonian
trafficking survivor, referring to her young daughter.
“There was so
much abuse during those months,” added the woman in her 20s, who said she was
rescued by a client from her ordeal.
“I didn’t die ...
and God saved me, so I know that He has a plan for my life,” she told an NGO
working with survivors which requested anonymity to protect her identity.
Last year the
US State Department downgraded Cyprus in its annual Trafficking in Persons Report
from Tier 1, the highest ranking, to Tier 2, citing problems including
protracted court proceedings and a lack of convictions.
While the report
does not formally rank the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, only
recognized by
Ankara, it says the territory would be in Tier 3 with the worst
offenders including Afghanistan and North Korea if it did.
Cyprus has been
split since 1974, after Turkey invaded in response to a Greek-sponsored coup.
And the lack of
progress in resolving the conflict shifts attention and resources away from
issues like human trafficking, said Nasia Hadjigeorgiou, assistant professor in
transitional justice, and human rights from the
University of Central Lancashire Cyprus.
The stalemate
also means there is no collaboration between law enforcement on the two sides,
Hadjigeorgiou said.
So human
trafficking across the island as a whole is “literally not being dealt with,”
she said.
‘Red alarm’
In the north, traffickers are abusing student visa regulations, said
Fezile Osum from the north’s Human Rights Platform, calling the situation a
“red alarm”.
The organization
manages an anti-trafficking hotline that has identified 12 victims — all of sex
trafficking — since late last year.
In some cases,
young women from African countries are brought in as students but when they
arrive “they are locked in private apartments and forced into (commercial)
sex”, Osum said.
That’s on top of
trafficking cases from nightclubs, where women on “barmaid” and “hostess” visas
must get regular STD checks despite organized prostitution being illegal in the
territory, she added.
One survivor said
clubs sometimes used blackmail and drugs to control trafficked women, Osum
said.
The north criminalized human trafficking for the
first time in 2020, but Osum said no convictions had yet been recorded.
She knew of one
victim who had reported her ordeal to police in the south, only to be told,
“this happened in the north... how can we collect evidence that you were
actually trafficked?”
Turkish Cypriot
politician Dogus Derya said the territory’s unrecognized status meant it was
unable to cooperate with international bodies to fight organized crime.
The north “can be
seen as an area of ‘impunity’ for human traffickers”, she said.
‘No hope’
A 2020 European Commission report, referencing 2017–2018 data, said
Cyprus eclipsed all other
EU countries for the number of identified or presumed
victims of human trafficking relative to its population, with 168 per million
people. Britain trailed in second place with 91.
“When they come,
they don’t have hope for the future,” said Paraskevi Tzeou, board member of
Cyprus Stop Trafficking, referring to survivors who seek help at the
organization’s women’s shelter in the south.
They have been
“from nearly everywhere” — from EU countries Romania and Bulgaria to
Russia,
Ukraine,
Ethiopia, Nigeria, Moldova, Cameroon,
India and Nepal, a worker from
the shelter said, asking to remain anonymous.
The Republic of
Cyprus, which controls the island’s south, adopted more comprehensive
anti-trafficking legislation in 2014, bolstering it five years later.
The south
officially recognized 21 victims of human trafficking last year, said Eleni
Michael, head of the police anti-trafficking unit.
But 169 people
were classified as “possible victims”, official figures showed.
Police work
tirelessly to identify and assist genuine cases, Michael told AFP, but only
verified allegations could lead to official victim status.
“If they said to
us that they were exploited outside ... the territory of Cyprus, it’s a little
bit difficult to clarify,” she said.
Cyprus has sought
to speed up glacial court proceedings, securing several recent trafficking
convictions.
But a Limassol
court said last month that “trafficking offenses have reached alarming
proportions in our country”.
Other cases have
collapsed, including that of four immigration police arrested in 2018 on
suspicion of assisting a trafficking network.
“The key
witnesses, who were the victims of the offenses... could not be traced to give
evidence... despite the attempts made to locate them through EUROPOL,” the
attorney general’s office told AFP.
In a faint
glimmer of hope, a technical committee on criminal matters brings together
representatives from both sides of the island.
But it has no
statutory authority, said Greek-Cypriot co-chair Andreas Kapardis.
It “can do
something (to help combat trafficking) if the political will is there”, he
said.
But concern about
official recognition of the north “stops some ideas in their tracks”, he added.
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