Violent anti-migrant riots in Cyprus town

As a second night of violence erupted in the town of Chloraka, about 155 kilometers west of the capital Nicosia, police were forced to intervene with teargas and water cannons to keep groups of migrants apart from local Greek Cypriots.

The state broadcaster CyBC said the locals, some of whom wore hoods, were linked to the far-right populist party Elam and were responsible for starting the violence, according to reporting by the Cyprus Mail on Tuesday (August 29).

Eight Greek Cypriots, one Greek national and 12 Syrian nationals were arrested, the Mail reported. Chloraka now has a round-the-clock police presence and more arrests were expected, the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) reported.

Monday night’s incidents followed a peaceful sit-down protest by a group of around 500 Syrian migrants against violent attacks late on Sunday, in which shop windows were smashed, cars damaged and migrants beaten and threatened, according to several local media reports.

The main Cypriot newspaper, Philenews, showed videos of people walking the streets chanting “out, out” and holding sticks and crowbars.

Violence despite fall in asylum applications

Cyprus had seen an increase in the arrival of irregular migrants and people seeking asylum in recent years, and the island remains the leading country in the EU in terms of new asylum applications per capita.

However, recent data from Eurostat show that in May, 2023, the number of first-time asylum seekers in Cyprus dropped to well below half that of May 2022, in contrast to the overall trend in the EU which saw a 27% increase in the same time frame. 

Cyprus also returns a relatively large number of asylum seekers. In 2022, it carried out around 7,000 returns, the most in relation to population of any EU country.

Most people seeking asylum in Cyprus are Syrians and Afghans, followed by Venezuelans and Colombians. About 20% of the migrant community in Chloraka comes from Syria.

There has been tension in the community in Chloraka for several years over what some locals believe is a disproportionately high number of asylum seekers or recognized refugees settled there.

Also read: Cyprus launches social media campaign to counter rise in migration

In 2021, the government declared that Chloraka would not take any new asylum seekers, and last week authorities declared that they would remove hundreds of migrants from a property complex, Ayios Nikolaos, where they had been living without electricity and running water.

Political parties respond to attacks

Reacting to the latest violence in Chloraka, a government spokesperson, Konstantinos Letymbiotis, warned people against taking the law into their own hands, saying it would not be tolerated.

When asked about indications that the perpetrators of the violence were organized ‘vigilantes’, he told CNA that police were investigating and all perpetrators would be brought to justice.

The president, Nicos Christodoulides, on Monday condemned the violence. But the populist Elam party has said migrants are to blame and called on the government to implement a stricter migration policy.

“We want our neighborhoods back, our villages, our cities that have been ghettoized. We want our country back,” Elam said in a statement, as quoted in the Cyprus Mail.

Stephanos Stephanou, the leader of the left-wing Akel party, described the incidents as an “organized pogrom” linking it to the government’s failure to provide proper housing for asylum seekers.