By Alexia Saoulli
CYPRUS is at serious risk of being overrun by immigrants, if the Movement for the Salvation of Cyprus is to be believed; failure to clamp down on the influx of legal and illegal foreigners, they say, will culminate in an irreversible situation where the majority of the island is made up of non-Greek Cypriots.
“We are fighting for our national identity… We are sounding the alarm bell and saying wake up, you’re losing your country,” Panicos Arsalides said yesterday.
Arsalides was speaking at a modest gathering of the Movement for the Salvation of Cyprus. The Movement, formed about a year ago, is concerned that the growing number of immigrants on the island will irrevocably impact the island’s demographics over the next 30 years.
“If there is a five per cent increase in the number of immigrants every year, aided by our low birth rate, in 30 years there will be about 600,000 immigrants and 520,000 Greek Cypriots,” he said.
Speakers at the meeting gave examples of other European countries facing similar predicaments and questioned how Cyprus was expected to cope.
One theory put forward was that the influx of immigrants was a design by Turkey to take over the island.
“Illegal immigrants are brought to the free areas by the Turkish mafia… It is undoubtedly a plan… A large portion of them speak Turkish as their mother tongue and say they are Kurds,” the participants heard.
Many nodded their heads in agreement, while others voiced their approval aloud.
“The situation is at the point of no return. If we are negligent, in another year or two it will be irreversible,” Arsalides said.
The 28 people who turned up to listen to the panel of seven Movement members were told that in light of a Cyprus problem solution, Turkey would use the immigrants as a negotiating tool to excuse the huge number of settlers in the occupied areas.
“They’ll say they are seasonal workers the way we have immigrants who do seasonal work, except theirs speak the same language, are the same nationality and have the same religion…. They’ll say they can’t get rid of them,” Arsalides said.
The economist also likened Nicosia’s Ledra Street on a Sunday to Lahore in Pakistan.
“From the Ochi roundabout to the mosque when it is Bairam [Islamic festival] there are around 10,000 children. Is that not something to worry about? We have a problem,” Arsalides said.
He said Cyprus had to open its eyes and set up a line of defence to protect itself from the wave of immigrants flooding the island like “a tsunami”.
“The excuse we keep hearing is that our economy needs immigrants. This has no basis because it has never been investigated. Who benefits from this situation I don’t know,” Arsalides said.
The Movement’s president, Petros Stylianou, said they had been unfairly labelled racist and almost called uneducated.
“We are none of these things,” he said.
Arsalides added: “What the Turks didn’t take [in 1974], the immigrants will. Wake up… And they say we are racist. In several years, Greek Cypriots will make up 20 to 25 per cent of the population and the remainder will mostly be made up of Turks followed by Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Chinese…”
Movement board member Vias Livadas said the group was talking to lawyers regarding to what extent people who defended illegal immigrants could be held accountable.
“They are accomplices and we are examining to what extent they can be considered accomplices,” he said.
Livadas also said the Movement had come across a map published in a Turkish publication depicting Cyprus, Crete, all of the Aegean islands, Salonica, part of Syria, northern Iraq and nearly all of Armenia as Turkish, therefore “proof” of what Turkey believed to be its territories.
The people present at the gathering showed signs of being afraid.
One man said: “We have been terrorised but it is the truth. These are the facts.”The Movement said it planned to make 2,000 copies and distribute the minutes of yesterday’s meeting.[/quote]
When Greek and Turkish Cypriots are both minorities, there may no longer be a problem to solve.
