From legal state to illegal state :
‘All rights have certain limits’
By Jean Christou
CITIZENS’ rights and freedom of speech are conditional on the interests of the state, the Justice Minister and the Police Chief said yesterday.
The candid comments came after state and police closed ranks to defend the detention for three hours on Wednesday of 16 young people handing out flyers opposing the government’s stance on the Cyprus problem.
“The role of the police is to protect citizens and property from any actions outside the law and, while the Republic respects the right to dissent, the government has the right to disagree. All rights have certain limits. The public interest is what determines where you draw the line,” said Justice Minister Kypros Chrysostomides.
“So I think preventive action, and that is the role of police – to act proactively – was well done in ascertaining the identity of the people who were there.”
Police Chief Papacostas said people were entitled to “free ideas”.
“But we do not believe that this was the proper place for this,” he added.
Asked if it was up to the police to decide where people could and could not express their “free ideas”, Papacostas said that at the time officers had felt it was correct to act.
He denied accusations that Cyprus was a police state. “What the police did was a precautionary move to preserve the climate of the day of Independence,” he said.
“On Independence Day, everyone wants to go to the parade, to see what is being offered in terms of defence and not to see the parade area turned into a place of confrontation or distribution of any material.”
Amid the uproar yesterday, both Chrysostomides and Papacostas said the group had not been arrested, but only asked to accompany officers to the police station. There they were held for three hours, ostensibly to establish their identity, but more likely to keep them detained until the parade was over. They were released without charge.
European Party deputy Riccos Erotokritou, lawyer for the group, said the matter would be settled in court. He was backed by other lawmakers who said the police action was unacceptable.
Erotokritou called it “preventative arrest” and an attempt “to gag citizens”.
The 16 people, aged between 17 and 30, were approached close to the VIP platform by plainclothes officers just before the start of the parade in Nicosia at 11am.
The officers asked them to identify themselves. They refused and were hauled off to a police station and had their flyers confiscated. A lawyer who was standing by and who tried intervening to claim their legal rights for them was also taken away. He claims police physically abused him while he was arrested and detained.
The leaflet being distributed was titled “Greek Resistance Movement” and called on the public to resist the notion of a bi-communal bi-zonal federation because it would legitimise the Turkish invasion.
Erotokritou pointed out later that the flyer did not contain seditious material because it called for a “Greek wall of resistance” through all possible “legal means”
Chrysostomides said the flyers were of a political nature “with words I do not think are admissible in a civilised democratic society, but this is totally different matter,” he said without elaborating further on the content of the flyer.
“The first thing I have to say is that no arrests were made,” said Government Spokesman Stefanos Stefanou during his daily press briefing yesterday.
“The police had some information about the intention of certain factions to disrupt the parade. There were some people who went to the suspected site [of the disruption] and distributed leaflets. They were brought to the police station for identification and when that was established they were released.”
Only one person, who had shown strong resistance and “inappropriate behaviour to the country’s security forces” was arrested, Stefanou said.
“Nothing more, nothing less, no mass arrests, nor any attempt to gag,” he added.
“The police have the right to ask for identification and just identification,” he said when asked. “This is what they did.” He said anyone who believed he had a legitimate complaint could resort to the court.
But lawyer Erotokritou said: “The issue of the arrest of people who handled their actions peacefully, did not commit any criminal offense, nor were going to disrupt the parade created a huge legal and political issue.
“Those arrested were searched, arrested, some were put in handcuffs and they were taken to the police station and detained for three hours.”
The lawyer was almost all night in the police station, he said.
“The big political question here is the concern with the message that anyone who disagrees with the established perceptions, especially on the Cyprus issue, will be arrested,” Erotokritou added.
Such behaviour could not be accepted in a modern European Cyprus and belonged in another era and another culture, he said.
He said President Demetris Christofias would do well to remember that freedom meant freedom, even to the person who thinks differently.
Opposition DISY and socialist EDEK also criticised the police action. EDEK leader Yiannakis Omirou said the rule of law was non negotiable.
DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades said even though the content of the leaflet might be disagreeable, all the police had done was highlight its existence.
“I think we are a democracy so tolerance to the opposite view should be exercised,” he said.
Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2008
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