Interior Minister Nicos Nouris on Monday called for a united front on the government’s decision to erect barriers along the Green Line, aimed at stopping the inflow of irregular migrants from the occupied area.

His call for support was in response to a protest at the weekend by Akaki residents who strongly condemned the government’s policy of putting barbed wire barriers, stretching many kilometres, and metal gates in their communities.

“It is proportionally small in comparison to what the overwhelming majority of the population is feeling at this moment,” he said, referring to issues of public order, safety and demographics.

“It’s not pleasant for anyone but unfortunately it is one of the only measures which will be effective,” he told Sigma.

Government plans to combat illegal entries with an 11km razor wire barrier that is being erected along the buffer zone and would stretch from Astromeritis to the old Nicoosia airport.

Nouris said that he was dismayed at the slow pace at which the barrier is being placed, pointing out that Poland had erected an 186km-long fence along its border with Belarus in just six months. That span is almost identical to the length of the Green Line, at 180km.

Disagreements were respected, he said, but answers have been given to all those who have said that they are troubled by the barrier.

He further reiterated that the buffer zone remains part of the Republic’s territory, and that “whoever lives and works in the buffer zone has the right to come and go whenever they wish – on the basis of the security placed at the gates – so there is no issue of impeding movement”.

“Some will face difficulties, yes, such as the human traffickers who are also amongst those protesting,” he said, adding that: “Unfortunately, some of our compatriots engage in human trafficking, and yes, they will face difficulties.”

Last month, the Cyprus Mail spoke to members of the community who are to be impacted by the barrier, many of whom told us that the policy is riddled with problems and is highly impractical.

But in making the case for the barrier, Nouris cited Greece for “decisively” reducing the migrant flows from Turkey. In 2020 there were 78,000 arrivals which were reduced to 4,000 the following year, in part thanks to the barrier put up in Evros.

But Greece has faced criticism from the EU over its handling of the irregular flows, although Nouris said on Sunday that “I would be happy if we could record similar results in the Republic of Cyprus,” referring to the significantly reduced flows.

“Before the EU points fingers or makes suggestions to a front-line member state facing a problem of this magnitude, it would be good first, in the same indicative way, to address the originator of the problem, which is Turkey,” he added.

Nouris on Monday said that Cyprus has not been reported for such actions, but hit back at such criticism, saying: “What is happening in the Republic today is the trampling of the human rights of the local population.”

“In my view, all these irregular migrants be arriving in such a manner constitutes a trampling of our human rights,” he said.

He conceded that Cyprus has a weakness and that is Turkey’s weaponisation of the irregular migration flows. Nouris has said that about 85 per cent of irregular arrivals crossed through the Green Line and that the number of arrivals was currently so high that efforts to integrate migrants into society was impossible.

Elsewhere, he said that so far this year over 3,000 deportations have been carried out – “a figure higher than that of the previous year’s total”.

“But our means are limited, when there are third countries which in practice refuse to accept their own nationals to return; then you can understand the scale of the issue,” he said.

Asked what happens in such cases, when a nation refuses to allow their own nationals to return, Nouris said: “I’ll put it simply so that everyone can understand, it’s all those people that you see wandering through the streets – despite having their applications rejected.”

He added that the weakness in practically returning those people is real, exacerbated by Cyprus being an island which is not in the Schengen zone.

Nouris said that at a meeting next week he will push for the EU and specifically Brussels to “finally” come up with centralised agreements for returns on part of the bloc as a whole. He explained that, currently, each member state must negotiate its own bilateral deal with countries such as India and Bangladesh, with small nations such as Cyprus having far less bargaining power than others.

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings .

As is common practice with almost all professional websites, https://cyprus-mail.com (our “Site”) uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your device, to improve your experience.

This document describes what information they gather, how we use it, and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the Site’s functionality.

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases, there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to the site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not, in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

The types of cookies used on this Site can be classified into one of three categories:

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser’s “Help” option on how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies may affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. Our Site uses [Google Analytics] which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the Site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the Site and the pages that you visit so that we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

Google Analytics is Google’s analytics tool that helps our website to understand how visitors engage with their properties. It may use a set of cookies to collect information and report website usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. The main cookie used by Google Analytics is the ‘__ga’ cookie.

In addition to reporting website usage statistics, Google Analytics can also be used, together with some of the advertising cookies, to help show more relevant ads on Google properties (like Google Search) and across the web and to measure interactions with the ads Google shows.

Learn more about Analytics cookies and privacy information.

An IP address is a numeric code that identifies your device on the Internet. We might use your IP address and browser type to help analyze usage patterns and diagnose problems on this Site and improve the service we offer to you. But without additional information, your IP address does not identify you as an individual.

When you accessed this Site, our cookies were sent to your web browser and stored on your device. By using our Site, you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies.

Hopefully, the above information has clarified things for you. As it was previously mentioned, if you are not sure whether you want to allow the cookies or not, it is usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it interacts with one of the features you use on our Site. However, if you are still looking for more information, then feel free to contact us via email at [email protected]

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.