YFred wrote:CopperLine wrote:Bill Cobbett
Whatever the status of the various hotels you mention (expropriated, illegally sold, etc) - and I've no problem with rightful ownership being restored - the implication that those who stay/visit such hotels or other tourist facilities are liable to arrest is really too far fetched. Whilst you are right in principle this is practically impossible to achieve. Trespass is a civil law matter and so would require all of the following improbable requirements to fall into place : tourist X in dodgy hotel Y would have to be seen by rightful property owner Z 'trespassing' in hotel Y. Property owner Z would then have to track and identify tourist X and issue a writ against them from a RoC court. Demonstrating tresspass is not as easy as it might first appear. Doing so against a foreign tourist, back in their home country is nigh on impossible.
In sum, if you treat this as a civil matter between erstwhile owner and tourist then it is, in my view, an empty threat.
By contrast if it was treated as a criminal matter, between the RoC and the tourist then all sorts of possibilities (probabilities) arise. The moment the tourist set foot in RoC (effective administration) they could be arrested, but it would still require some proof of entering/using illegally acquired property. Of course the obvious answer to this is to say that anyone entering the north is, by definition, entering illegally occupied/acquired territory and property. If that is the case then the problem is not with the TRNC but with the RoC to the extent that the latter allows people, tourists included, to travel to and from the north. It is RoC public policy to allow people to move to and fro across the Green Line; and that sends a clear message to tourists (and courts) that it is not regarded as illegal to travel to, use and return from illegally acquired territory/property. And that is the price that RoC has to pay for EU membership. (If RoC claims jurisdiction over the whole island then it is a fundamental of EU membership that it cannot then say that EU citizens, TCs and foreign tourists included, cannot go to and from territories under its jurisdiction).
In sum, in my view, unless RoC public policy changes by 180 degrees and thereby breaches basic EU acquis provisions then tourists in the north are not liable to arrest on criminal grounds and the chances are infinitesimally small on civil grounds.
Isn't that what we call a double edged sword?
It seems to be double-edged for RoC or at least for certain political views expressed by GC nationalists.
My view is that the most effective way of resolving the Cyprus Problem is to open the borders fully, encourage greater citizen movements across the borders, integrate commercially and socially north and south, at the same time as insisting on the removal of Turkish occupying troops (and SBA) and continuing legal and and political pressure for the restitution or compensation for property losses. 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall we might learn a lesson or two for Cyprus : the Wall fell not because stuck-in-the-past leadership wanted it but because ordinary citizens of east Germany wanted to travel, freedom of movement. (The Cyprus Problem is not the division of the island but the unshakeable conviction of most Cypriots that this fate has only befallen them, that their hurt is unique, and that they have therefore nothing to learn from others. That is Cyprus' problem).
The carpetbaggers (2,000? 5,000?) are a drop in the ocean compared to the annual 2.5 million tourists that arrive at Larnaca and Paphos.
