Cyprus: Is anybody looking for them?

Is anybody looking for them?

Article by Eleni Mavrou, AKEL Political Bureau member

Sunday 17 April 2022, “HARAVGI” newspaper

Between 2019 and April 2022, 11 unaccompanied minors from third countries disappeared from their place of residence, where they were supposedly in the custody of the state, and are still missing.

Just stop and think that we are actually talking about children who have left their countries and families to escape, inter alia, hunger, being recruited to fight in a war, arranged child marriages, the consequences of war…We are talking about children who have walked 12 to 14 hours through mountains, with snow up to their waists, to cross a border or who were put in backpacks by their parents themselves, paying huge prices to human traffickers, to reach somewhere where they would hope to find safety. They are frequently fooled and their “company” with traffickers who are supposed to help them can even end in tragedy.

These children have been violently deprived of the carelessness of childhood.

Seven of them disappeared from the notorious Pournara reception centre for refugees and migrants where hundreds of children are still being crammed in containers without any access to education or other engagement – despite all the reports that have been submitted by the Children’s Commissioner, the Ombudsman Office and those of the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee…

Has anyone bothered to search for them?

Or will (I doubt it) we perhaps be shocked once again for a while and look for where we went wrong when any of them are found in some shed or dumped in a lake?

Does the state’s obligation to protect these children exhaust itself in the few and overcrowded juvenile facilities it provides? To which, of course, only a “lucky” few end up in.

How many unaccompanied minors are left outside shelters and are wandering in squares and alleys?

Like the children who, not being able to withstand the miserable conditions of our so-called “accommodation centres”, preferred to stay in tents, like the ones in the Paphos Gate area with all the dangers that this entails?

Once again, it’s fortunate that there are kind-hearted people who care and provide them with some food and blankets to keep them warm – but for how much longer?

And what happens once they turn 18 and are removed from the structures? Where will they go? What services will support them until they can, alone and helpless, stand on their own two feet? What local communities will embrace and help them find their way when some communities have tolerated or even applauded the racist rhetoric of their local community leaders (remember the cases that occurred in Zygi and Paralimni?) at the possibility of these children being accommodated in their own area?

Other than that, the President of the ruling DISY party, Averof Neophytou, has now remembered to elaborate proposals for…a possible scheme to host Ukrainian refugees by Cypriot families indeed with the provision of financial support, even on the part of the state!

It is a disgrace for a state to treat people, much less children, in this way. The DISY President cannot continue to hide behind all the platitudes that the Minister of Internal Affairs utters on every occasion.

Since these children have found themselves in our country, we have a responsibility and an obligation to provide them with every support. And above all to protect them.

If we want to be called a state.

If we want to be called civilized people.

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