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<\/div>\n– Advertisement –<\/span> Cyprus\u2019s frozen conflict is providing fertile ground for human traffickers with cases at \u201calarming\u201d levels in the EU member state, and the breakaway north considered as bad as Afghanistan.<\/p>\n \u201cI love her, but at the same time she reminds me about my past,\u201d said one Cameroonian trafficking survivor, referring to her young daughter.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was so much abuse during those months,\u201d added the woman in her 20s, who said she was rescued by a client from her ordeal.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t die \u2026 and God saved me, so I know that He has a plan for my life,\u201d she told an NGO working with survivors which requested anonymity to protect her identity.<\/p>\n Last year the US State Department downgraded Cyprus in its annual Trafficking in Persons Report from Tier 1, the highest ranking, to Tier 2, citing problems including protracted court proceedings and a lack of convictions.<\/p>\n While the report does not formally rank the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, only recognised by Ankara, it says the territory would be in Tier 3 with the worst offenders including Afghanistan and North Korea if it did.<\/p>\n Cyprus has been split since 1974, after Turkey invaded in response to a Greek-sponsored coup.<\/p>\n And the lack of progress in resolving the conflict shifts attention and resources away from issues like human trafficking, said Nasia Hadjigeorgiou, assistant professor in transitional justice and human rights from the University of Central Lancashire Cyprus.<\/p>\n The stalemate also means there is no collaboration between law enforcement on the two sides, Hadjigeorgiou said.<\/p>\n So human trafficking across the island as a whole is \u201cliterally not being dealt with,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u2018Red alarm\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n In the north, traffickers are abusing student visa regulations, said Fezile Osum from the north\u2019s Human Rights Platform, calling the situation a \u201cred alarm\u201d.<\/p>\n The organisation manages an anti-trafficking hotline that has identified 12 victims \u2014 all of sex trafficking \u2014 since late last year.<\/p>\n In some cases, young women from African countries are brought in as students but when they arrive \u201cthey are locked in private apartments and forced into (commercial) sex\u201d, Osum said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s on top of trafficking cases from nightclubs, where women on \u201cbarmaid\u201d and \u201chostess\u201d visas must get regular STD checks despite organised prostitution being illegal in the territory, she added.<\/p>\n One survivor said clubs sometimes used blackmail and drugs to control trafficked women, Osum said.<\/p>\n The north criminalised human trafficking for the first time in 2020, but Osum said no convictions had yet been recorded.<\/p>\n She knew of one victim who had reported her ordeal to police in the south, only to be told, \u201cthis happened in the north\u2026 how can we collect evidence that you were actually trafficked?\u201d<\/p>\n Turkish Cypriot politician Dogus Derya said the territory\u2019s unrecognised status meant it was unable to cooperate with international bodies to fight organised crime.<\/p>\n The north \u201ccan be seen as an area of \u2018impunity\u2019 for human traffickers\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n \u2018No hope\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n A 2020 European Commission report, referencing 2017-2018 data, said Cyprus eclipsed all other EU countries for the number of identified or presumed victims of human trafficking relative to its population, with 168 per million people. Britain trailed in second place with 91.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they come, they don\u2019t have hope for the future,\u201d said Paraskevi Tzeou, board member of Cyprus Stop Trafficking, referring to survivors who seek help at the organisation\u2019s women\u2019s shelter in the south.<\/p>\n They have been \u201cfrom nearly everywhere\u201d \u2014 from EU countries Romania and Bulgaria to Russia, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Moldova, Cameroon, India and Nepal, a worker from the shelter said, asking to remain anonymous.<\/p>\n The Republic of Cyprus, which controls the island\u2019s south, adopted more comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation in 2014, bolstering it five years later.<\/p>\n The south officially recognised 21 victims of human trafficking last year, said Eleni Michael, head of the police anti-trafficking unit.<\/p>\n But 169 people were classified as \u201cpossible victims\u201d, official figures showed.<\/p>\n Police work tirelessly to identify and assist genuine cases, Michael told AFP, but only verified allegations could lead to official victim status.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they said to us that they were exploited outside \u2026 the territory of Cyprus, it\u2019s a little bit difficult to clarify,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Cyprus has sought to speed up glacial court proceedings, securing several recent trafficking convictions.<\/p>\n But a Limassol court said last month that \u201ctrafficking offences have reached alarming proportions in our country\u201d.<\/p>\n Other cases have collapsed, including that of four immigration police arrested in 2018 on suspicion of assisting a trafficking network.<\/p>\n \u201cThe key witnesses, who were the victims of the offences\u2026 could not be traced to give evidence\u2026 despite the attempts made to locate them through EUROPOL,\u201d the attorney general\u2019s office told AFP.<\/p>\n In a faint glimmer of hope, a technical committee on criminal matters brings together representatives from both sides of the island.<\/p>\n But it has no statutory authority, said Greek-Cypriot co-chair Andreas Kapardis.<\/p>\n It \u201ccan do something (to help combat trafficking) if the political will is there\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n But concern about official recognition of the north \u201cstops some ideas in their tracks\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n AFP<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" – Advertisement – Cyprus\u2019s frozen conflict is providing fertile ground for human traffickers with cases at \u201calarming\u201d levels in the EU member state, and the breakaway north considered as bad as Afghanistan. \u201cI love her, but at the same time she reminds me about my past,\u201d said one Cameroonian trafficking survivor, referring to her young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1058722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3894],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1058721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1058721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1058721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1058721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1058721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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