Doros Polykarpou is a leading human rights defender and founding member of KISA (Action for Equality, Support and Anti-Racism), a non-profit organization in Cyprus with 150 members, where he served as an Executive Director.
KISA provides support to migrants and asylum seekers, combats discrimination and addresses human trafficking in Cyprus. The Mediterranean island, with a population of 1.2 million, has been an EU member state since 2004. But, like Ireland, it is not part of the Schengen area.
Because of its geographical situation, a crosspoint between Europe and the Middle East, Cyprus regularly receives the most asylum applications per capita of any of the EU’s 27 member states, with around 21,600 applications in 2022 and 11,600 in 2023.
The rise of the far-right and restrictive policies have changed the context in Cyprus, making it more dangerous for Doros Polykarpou and his peers to work on the ground. He has been the target of a multitude of attacks, including defamation campaigns, criminal prosecutions and death threats – the latest being a bomb attack on KISA’s offices in Nicosia on 5 January 2024.
Doros Polykarpou took part in the event organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the European Parliament on 9 December 2024.
This “spotlight” event, celebrating Human Rights Day and Human Rights Defenders Day, was meant to address the protection needs of Human Rights Defenders “in the current context of shrinking civic space and rising extremism, populism, and nationalism”, according to the Regional Office of the OHCHR in Brussels.
When was KISA launched, and for what purpose, in what context?
Kisa was launched in 1996 to support the idea of an open society and respond to two main issues—the first is Cyprus’ policy on regulated migration, which was only elaborated in 1991. Before then, Cyprus had no such policy nor migrant workers.
Second, we had difficulties as a bi-communal state in Cyprus. The idea of Kisa was to work in a positive way and promote the idea of an open, inclusive society not only for the two main communities on the island but also for the migrants coming to Cyprus.
Where do the migrants come from mainly?
At first, in the 1990s, the migrants coming for work to fill the labour gaps were mainly from Southeast Asia – Philippines, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Vietnam – and the Middle East.
We also had Syrians working in the construction sector and Egyptians in the farming and agriculture sectors. People from countries Cyprus had excellent relations with, such as Romania and Bulgaria, then came to the island, even before those were admitted to the European Union. India has recently become a strong community.
More recently, we have had many foreigners registered to work in the service sector. And we also have refugees who come to protect themselves and their families. The majority of refugees are Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians and also from Cameroon, because of the conflict in this country. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, most refugees come from Sub-Saharan Africa.
What are the principal human rights challenges for migrants and refugees in Cyprus?
For nearly 10 years, we delivered free information, advice and mediation to migrant workers. Cyprus was not an EU member until 2004, and there was no funding available to support that type of work. There were not enough NGOs to help the migrants, who were in very vulnerable situations.
The system in place was similar to Lebanon’s Kafala (sponsorship) system. Migrants were recruited by private agencies and had to pay huge amounts to get to Cyprus. From the moment the employer terminated the contract, the migrant lost his residence permit.
Migrants eventually came to us as a last resort for serious labour violations and sometimes criminal violations, such as physical or sexual abuse. The majority were women employed as domestic workers, very vulnerable because of the nature of their jobs.
For many years, we have defended the rights of migrants until we realized it was not enough, and we had to find a more balanced approach. We had to continue doing advocacy work and document the situations to raise awareness. KISA is the only NGO doing strategic litigation: we won several legal cases on violations of migrants’ rights in Cyprus and in the European Court of Human Rights.
Do you have figures on migrants and refugees?
Statistics are complicated because Cyprus is a small island and not part of Schengen. The refugees need help moving out of Cyprus. For many years, we have discussed the need for refugees to be able to move freely in the EU, but this has yet to be the case.
After the EU-Türkiye agreement of 2016 to stop the flow of irregular migration from Türkiye to Europe, Cyprus was under a lot of pressure. Cyprus became the first EU country in terms of new asylum applications per capita of any of the EU’s 27 member states.
Migrants are estimated to account for 20% of the labour force, around 10 % of the population. Refugees are estimated to be 4,5% to 5% of the population, on top of the migrants. We must remember that Cyprus was always a crosspoint with much movement. We had in the past a vast Lebanese community who went back to Lebanon after the war in the 1980’s. We now also have Russians and Ukrainians, considered a different category and representing 8% of the population.
However, instrumentalization happens at the same time. For many years, we have left asylum applications expanding without examining them until we reached a situation that can be presented as chaotic for two reasons.
On the one hand, the situation is instrumentalized to initiate a toxic narrative to justify the violation of international law and our obligations, with the argument that we run out of resources and capacities to deal with asylum applications.
On the other hand, the political instrumentalization happened in the specific context of Cyprus, where we have serious national issues, corruption issues, economic problems, etc. All these encouraged a political discussion around migrants, to divert the attention.
It’s very easy to use “the other” as a scapegoat. The rise of extremism and populism is a vicious cycle: politicians encourage society, and then society demands action. In the end, society as a whole finds itself in danger and has to protect democratic principles and the rule of law.
Have hate speech crimes and racist violence been on the rise in Cyprus because of the Syrian crisis in 2011?
No, the root cause is the political instrumentalization of migration that started in 2013. The far-right has used this theme, and other mainstream politicians have followed, with a rise of hate speech and violence against refugees.
In the municipality of Chloraka, for instance, pogroms against migrants happened in August 2023. Houses and cars were burnt, and people were hunted in the streets. The local authorities said migrants were linked to jihadists, young terrorists sent to our communities to work against our identity.
It was an ongoing propaganda until we reached a point where the people took the law into their own hands. The police were present and very passive. It’s only after we put pressure on the authorities that the police started an investigation. Until now, nobody has been convicted in relation to the pogroms in Chloraka or the ones that took place later in Limassol.
Your offices suffered a bomb attack in January 2024. Do you feel threatened?
The bomb attack was an expression of this climate created in our society. No public statement from any authority was made to say this attack is unacceptable. The police are not making progress in their investigations.
There is also direct criminalization from the authorities: we have several criminal cases against our organization and our active members directly from law enforcement agencies.
We can report physical attacks, threats, defamation, and fake news, but nothing is being investigated. In Chloraka, one small far-right group issued a press release stating I gave instructions to jihadists to attack Greek Cypriot soldiers. We reported this. This was from a registered party, but no action was taken against this level of conspiracy and spreading of fake news.
Yes, we feel exposed to risk. When I walk the streets at night, I don’t know if someone might think he’s a good patriot if he gets rid of me since I am depicted as a national traitor.
Is this situation going to worsen because of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon?
Since the conflict, our Government is proud to say that no refugees managed to reach Cyprus. Our Government openly admits that they don’t consider pushbacks, stopping the boats of Syrian asylum seekers and even Palestinians, as a violation of international law. They asked the Lebanese authorities to intervene, and we have enough evidence that migrants are then deported to Syria.
Our country propagated the idea of “safe zones” in Syria and the need to send Syrians back to Syria forcibly. With the regime change in Syria, if the country stabilizes and there is no civil war, Cypriot authorities will most probably use this as an opportunity to say Syrian opponents need to go back to Syria – even those who were born in Cyprus 20 years ago and never saw Syria.
After 1974, most Greek and Turkish Cypriots have lived separately in the island’s northern and southern regions currently divided by a UN-controlled buffer zone called the Green Line. Is it a breach of international law for the Republic of Cyprus to refuse asylum to refugees stranded there?
The main difficulty was that the Cypriot government decided to stop entry from the sea and land. According to Green Line EU Regulation, this is not a border but needs to be controlled and monitored to curb irregular migration. However, the buffer zone is under the jurisdiction of the Government of the Republic of Cyprus. It owes compliance with its EU and international obligations relating to asylum. The situation is complicated.
The Cypriot Government gave up, and we won’t have asylum seekers stuck in the buffer zone for a while, because we filed an interim order under Rule 39 at the European Court of Human Rights. After the intervention of the Court which asked questions of the Government at the end of November, the Government of Cyprus immediately opened up the buffer zone and gave refugees access to asylum procedures.
In addition, last October an important case was won before the European Court of Human Rights in relation to pushbacks at sea (M.A. and Z.R v Cyprus).
KISA along with Euromed Rights and the Human Rights Centre at Ghent University were third party interveners. The Court found Cyprus to be violating the right to be free from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, collective expulsions and the right to an effective remedy to Syrian asylum seekers being pushed back to Lebanon
Do you have strong partnership in your work with UN entities? How is that helping you in your mission?
To be honest, if we still exist, it’s only because of the international support. The network of civil society organizations we work with is very supportive. We have very good and positive working relations with UN bodies regarding monitoring human rights and labour rights, as well as our protection.
What is your message today to EU institutions?
The EU must take the matter of protecting human rights defenders very seriously, and not only in Cyprus but in all member states. It seems to be tendency now that the solidarity with less privileged groups like migrants is not appreciated, criminalized and targeted in many ways, including by state authorities themselves. People are going to face personal and collective difficulties. We need to think of mechanisms in the EU to protect human rights and our solidarity work, even in a more hostile political environment.