As we gather – even us few – every two or three days and demonstrate in the streets and squares of Nicosia…
As your relatives and friends camp outside the Supreme Court with their souls in their mouths and the rain lashing them, waiting…
As in your homeland on Sunday, another crucial hand in the poker game of history may be played for your people…
You, fighter Kenan Ayas, will be gazing from your isolation cell at the starry night sky of Nicosia, at the night of May, on hunger strike for a week now, without any right to communicate with the outside world, except for those stars that illuminate your loneliness and perhaps – in their dim and doubtful light – your vision of a free and democratic Kurdistan.
Even the usually unmoved Commissioner for Administration and Human Rights, Mrs. Lottidou, intervened (after a complaint, of course) to suggest to the authorities – that is, to the allegedly sensitive for principles and values Minister of Justice, Mrs. Koukidou Prokopiou, and to the Prison Administration – that “Mr. Agias should be allowed to communicate with his relatives…”
As for the particularly active parliamentary Human Rights Committee that does not let any “metoo” -and rightly so- pass outside the door of the Kyrenia chamber in the House of Representatives, what can one say? Any comments are unnecessary.
In Cyprus we have a proverb Kenan. In the 11 years you have been here where you have lived without provoking anyone and without breaking any law, as a recognised political refugee persecuted by the Turkish regime (and not as an asylum seeker with a torn passport) you should have learned this Cypriot proverb.
But you don’t sit in Cyprus. You travelled all over Europe to speak at shows, lectures, debates etc. for the rights of your people. And that annoyed Ertogan. The fact that you annoyed the dictator was quite natural of course. It was natural that he had his buddies in Berlin after you.
What we did not expect was that your action would annoy the Republic of Cyprus, which is itself a victim of Turkish occupation and aggression.
Our proverb, therefore, Comrade Kenan, goes like this: “Where the fire falls, it burns”.
Now you have learned something about Cyprus.
It’s a cold night in May in Nicosia, Kenan.