Ενημέρωση για την χτεσινή δίκη Πολιτικής Ανυπακοής 2/2/15 φωτογραφίες άρθρα από Sigmalive και Cyprus Mail

 

 

 

 

Αλληλέγγυοι συμπαραστάτες στην δίκη Πολιτικής Ανυπακοής 2/2/15

Μαζί με τον φίλο τον Χάρη και τον Εύρο που στηρίζουν την προσπάθεια!

Ο Majid Ιρανός πρόσφυγας παρών στο δικαστήριο ως ένδειξη αλληλεγγύης και εκτίμησης!!! Η αλληλεγγύη το μόνο μας όπλο!!! 

http://www.sigmalive.com/simerini/columns/eks-aformis/203300/i-petameni-psyxi-tou-majid-eazadi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.sigmalive.com/simerini/news/203232/sto-perimene-o-anypakouos-dikigoros

Στο… περίμενε ο «ανυπάκουος» δικηγόρος

Email Facebook Tweet| <a «=»» href=»javascript:window.print()» class=»print»>Εκτύπωση | 03 Φεβρουάριος 2015, 06:58 | ΤΟΥ ΜΑΡΙΟΥ ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙΟΥ

Υποστηρικτές της προσπάθειας Μιχάλη Παρασκευά πλαισιώνουν σύνθημα αλληλεγγύης προς αυτόν, γραμμένο στο περιτείχισμα του Επαρχιακ

Νέα αναβολή στη δίκη του Μιχάλη Παρασκευά
Κατηγορείται ότι, ως αυτοτελώς εργαζόμενος, δεν πλήρωσε τις εισφορές του στο Ταμείο Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων

Νέα αναβολή πήρε χθες η δίκη του δικηγόρου και πολιτικού ακτιβιστή Μιχάλη Παρασκευά, που, όπως είναι γνωστό στους αναγνώστες της «Σ», κατηγορείται ότι ως αυτοτελώς εργαζόμενος δεν πλήρωσε τις εισφορές του στο Ταμείο Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων. Στη χθεσινή, έκτη στη σειρά, δικάσιμο, προβλεπόταν ακρόαση της υπόθεσης, η οποία όμως αναβλήθηκε για τις 5 Μαΐου 2015, αφού, όπως είπε η δικαστής Δώνα Κωνσταντίνου, «υπάρχουν άλλες παλαιότερες υποθέσεις στο πρόγραμμα». Ο 38χρονος «ανυπάκουος» δικηγόρος δεν παραδέχτηκε ενοχή στην κατηγορία εναντίον του. Η έναρξη της δίκης του έγινε στις 13 Μαρτίου 2014, συνεχίστηκε στις 10 Απριλίου 2014, στις 12 Μαΐου 2014, την 1η Ιουλίου 2014 και στις 14 Νοεμβρίου 2014. Όπως αναφέραμε και σε προηγούμενα ρεπορτάζ μας, ο Μιχάλης Παρασκευάς αξιοποιεί τη δίκη του, (που η «Σ» παρακολουθεί ανελλιπώς), προσπαθώντας να διευρύνει σε μαζικό κίνημα, την πολιτική ανυπακοή του.

Προς ανάδειξη της κακοδιαχείρισης
Για ακόμα μια φορά, δεκάδες συμπολίτες μας από πολλές περιοχές της Κύπρου, περιλαμβανομένης της Λεμεσού και της ελεύθερης Αμμοχώστου, παρευρέθηκαν χθες στο Επαρχιακό Δικαστήριο Λευκωσίας, σε ένδειξη συμπαράστασης και αλληλεγγύης στον κ. Παρασκευά. Αισθητή έκαναν την παρουσία τους στον χώρο του δικαστηρίου άντρες της ΜΜΑΔ, προφανώς για πρόληψη τυχόν επεισοδίων, παρά το ότι η προσέλευση υποστηρικτών της προσπάθειάς του και η παρακολούθηση της δίκης του, υπήρξε πάντα ειρηνική και κόσμια – και έτσι ήταν και χθες.

Ο κ. Παρασκευάς ανέφερε ότι η πολιτική ανυπακοή του, «έχει μόνο σκοπό την ανάδειξη της ενδεχόμενης διαγραφής της κρατικής οφειλής ύψους 7.5 δισεκατομμυρίων ευρώ προς το ΤΚΑ». Στοχεύει επίσης «στην ανάδειξη της διαχρονικής κακοδιαχείρισης των χρημάτων του ΤΚΑ, όπως αυτό διαπιστώνεται ξεκάθαρα σε σειρά ετήσιων εκθέσεων της Γενικής Ελέγκτριας, η οποία κάνει λόγο για “διευθετήσεις που δεν είναι προς το συμφέρον του Ταμείου”. Περαιτέρω, έχει αίτημά της τον κοινωνικό έλεγχο και την αυτοδιαχείριση του ΤΚΑ, καθότι το αποθεματικό του, ύψους 7.5 δις, διαχρονικά κατασπαταλήθηκε από το κράτος κατά παράβαση του άρθρου 9 του Συντάγματος».

Να αποφασίζουμε για τη ζωή μας
Μετά τη χθεσινή σύντομη διαδικασία στο δικαστήριο πραγματοποιήθηκε -όπως και στις προηγούμενες δικάσιμους- συγκέντρωση και συζήτηση, έξω από το κτίριο του παρακείμενου Ανωτάτου Δικαστηρίου, όπου ο Μ. Παρασκευάς εξέφρασε την ευχαρίστησή του για την παρουσία των παρευρισκομένων. Επανέλαβε ότι «είναι πολύ σημαντική η παρουσία σας εδώ, γιατί η εξουσία νιώθει ότι υπάρχει λαϊκή στήριξη της προσπάθειας αυτής. Υπάρχουν πρακτικοί τρόποι, εμείς οι ίδιοι οι απλοί άνθρωποι, να αποφασίζουμε για τη ζωή μας, φτάνει να καταλάβουμε τη δύναμή μας». Υπενθύμισε ξανά ότι, ήδη, συστάθηκε 11μελής Επιτροπή για την Πρωτοβουλία Κοινωνικού Ελέγχου και Αυτοδιαχείρισης του Ταμείου Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων, που οργανώνει ενημερωτικές συναντήσεις ενδιαφερομένων πολιτών σε όλες τις πόλεις.

Είπε ότι εγγράφηκαν ήδη αρκετά μέλη και αναφέρθηκε σε τέσσερα κριτήρια αποδοχής κάποιου ως μέλους της Επιτροπής: «πρώτον, να μην είναι στέλεχος κόμματος, δεύτερον, να μην έχει άμεση ή έμμεση σχέση με ασφαλιστικές εταιρείες, τρίτον, αν είναι εργοδότης, να καταβάλλει κοινωνικές ασφαλίσεις στους εργαζόμενούς του και τέταρτον, να μην είναι φασίστας, δηλαδή άνθρωπος που πιστεύει στη δύναμη του αρχηγού και σε άλλες τέτοιες ανοησίες».

Να καταλάβουμε ότι δεν υπάρχουν σωτήρες
Ο Μ. Παρασκευάς τόνισε ότι «ως Επιτροπή, έχουμε δύο πολύ σημαντικά αιτήματα. Το πρώτο, είναι η αλλαγή του νόμου που διέπει το Ταμείο Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων, ώστε να αποφασίζουν οι πολίτες για τα χρήματα που εισφέρουν στο Ταμείο και να έχουν λόγο στο Διοικητικό Συμβούλιο του Ταμείου. Το δεύτερο αίτημα είναι για οικονομικό και λογιστικό έλεγχο του Ταμείου από τον λαό. Θέλουμε τον κόσμο να έρθει να συμμετάσχει σε αυτή την πρωτοβουλία που μας αφορά όλους. Πάρτε το παράδειγμα της Ελβετίας, που είναι 8 εκατομμύρια πληθυσμός και κάθε μήνα κάνουν δημοψηφίσματα. Υπάρχουν τρόποι, ειδικά με τη βοήθεια της τεχνολογίας κι εμείς θέλουμε να το κάνουμε πραγματικότητα.

Είναι δύσκολο εγχείρημα να οργανωθεί αυτό το κίνημα, αλλά πρέπει να καταλάβουμε ότι δεν υπάρχουν σωτήρες – εμείς πρέπει να πάρουμε την τύχη μας στα χέρια μας. Και θα γίνουμε μοντέλο για τον τρόπο με τον οποίο πρέπει να λειτουργεί όλη η κοινωνία, αμεσο-δημοκρατικά». Αναφέρθηκε, ξανά, στο παράδειγμα της πολιτικής ανυπακοής της Αμερικανίδας έγχρωμης μοδίστρας Ρόζας Παρκς, που το 1955 στην Αλαμπάμα αρνήθηκε να δώσει τη θέση της στο λεωφορείο σε έναν λευκό, αντιστεκόμενη στην τότε πολιτική φυλετικού διαχωρισμού των ΗΠΑ. «Η Ρόζα Παρκς», είπε, «δεν εφάρμοσε τον ρατσιστικό νόμο που χώριζε τους ανθρώπους σε άσπρους και μαύρους και που αποδέχονταν και οι δικαστές μέχρι τότε και έτσι το κίνημα των πολιτικών δικαιωμάτων, με τους εκατοντάδες χιλιάδες ανθρώπους στον δρόμο, κατάφερε να καταργήσει τον ρατσιστικό νόμο».

Οι οφειλές του κράτους προς το ΤΚΑ
Σε επιστολή του προς την Υπουργό Εργασίας και Κοινωνικών Ζέτα Αιμιλιανίδου στις 7 Μαΐου 2013, ο Μιχάλης Παρασκευάς ζητούσε ενημέρωση, «αν έχουν διαγραφεί όλες, ή μερικές από τις οφειλές του κράτους, προς το Ταμείο Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων». Και πρόσθετε: «Σας ενημερώνω ότι δεν προτίθεμαι να καταβάλω ξανά οφειλές κοινωνικών ασφαλίσεων, μέχρι να τύχω ενημέρωσης και επίσης να σας ενημερώσω ότι αν παρ’ ελπίδα έχουν διαγραφεί οι οφειλές του κράτους προς το Ταμείο Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων, προσωπικά δεν πρόκειται να καταβάλω ξανά οιοδήποτε ποσό προς τις Κοινωνικές Ασφαλίσεις, διότι δεν προτίθεμαι να καταβάλω εισφορές, απλώς για να τις αρπάξουν αυτοί οι οποίοι αποκομίζουν κέρδη από τόκους, ήτοι οι τοκογλύφοι/τραπεζίτες, για τους οποίους ήδη η οικονομία της Κύπρου έχει δεχτεί ανεπανόρθωτο πλήγμα».

Ένα χρόνο μετά την καταδίκη
Το «παρών» του στο δικαστήριο, σε ένδειξη συμπαράστασης προς τον Μιχάλη Παρασκευά, έδωσε χθες και ο πελάτης του, 44χρονος Ιρανός αιτητής πολιτικού ασύλου Majid Eazadi, που τον Αύγουστο 2014 είχε αφεθεί ελεύθερος από τις Κεντρικές Φυλακές, όπου εξέτιε ποινή 6μηνης φυλάκισης από τον Απρίλη 2014, μετά που συνελήφθη στο αεροδρόμιο Πάφου με πλαστό δανέζικο διαβατήριο, σε μια απελπισμένη προσπάθειά του να φύγει από την Κύπρο.

Ο Eazadi, που απασχόλησε τη «Σ» με δύο προηγούμενα ρεπορτάζ μας, είναι η μοναδική περίπτωση αλλοδαπού που παρέμεινε για πέντε ολόκληρα χρόνια υπό κράτηση, με σκοπό την απέλαση, ενώ αυτό δεν ήταν εφικτό, «κατά παράβαση κάθε αρχής δικαίου», σύμφωνα με τον δικηγόρο του, Μιχάλη Παρασκευά. O κ. Παρασκευάς μάς ενημέρωσε ότι ειδοποιήθηκε πρόσφατα, ότι η έφεση που καταχώρισε εναντίον της «εξωφρενικής» ποινής φυλάκισης του πελάτη του, ορίστηκε για ακρόαση στις 20 Μαΐου 2015, δηλαδή έναν ολόκληρο χρόνο, μετά την καταδίκη του (!). «Αυτό σημαίνει ότι το δικαίωμα αυτού του ανθρώπου για δίκαιη δίκη, παραβιάστηκε κατάφωρα», σχολίασε ο Μ. Παρασκευάς.
 

 

http://www.sigmalive.com/simerini/columns/eks-aformis/203300/i-petameni-psyxi-tou-majid-eazadi

 

Η πεταμένη ψυχή του Majid Eazadi

Email Facebook Tweet| <a «=»» href=»javascript:window.print()» class=»print»>Εκτύπωση | 03 Φεβρουάριος 2015, 07:00 | Με τον Μάριο Δημητρίου

Με ακούμπησε στον ώμο, γελαστός, ο Ιρανός αιτητής πολιτικού ασύλου Majid Eazadi, χθες στο προαύλιο του δικαστηρίου Λευκωσίας – παρά το ότι πονούσε πολύ, λόγω της Ηπατίτιδας Γ΄ που άρπαξε στο Μπλοκ 10 των Κεντρικών Φυλακών, όπου κρατείτο παράνομα για χρόνια. Είναι η μοναδική περίπτωση αλλοδαπού που παρέμεινε για πέντε ολόκληρα χρόνια υπό κράτηση, με σκοπό την απέλαση, ενώ αυτό δεν ήταν εφικτό, «κατά παράβαση κάθε αρχής δικαίου», σύμφωνα με τον δικηγόρο του Μιχάλη Παρασκευά.

Είχε έρθει χθες από τη Λεμεσό, με ένα σαραβαλάκι που του δάνεισαν, για να συμπαρασταθεί στον Μιχάλη Παρασκευά, στη δίκη του για μη καταβολή των εισφορών του στο Ταμείο Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων, ως πράξη πολιτικής ανυπακοής.

Πολιτικά ανυπάκουος στη δική του πατρίδα είναι και ο Majid, μόνο που τη δική του ανυπακοή, σε ένα καθεστώς αυταρχικό και δογματικό, την πληρώνει πολύ ακριβά, με την πολιτική καταδίωξη, την αυτοεξορία μπροστά στον κίνδυνο σύλληψης, φυλάκισης και πιθανής δολοφονίας του. Την πληρώνει πολύ ακριβά ακόμα και στην Κύπρο, τη χώρα όπου κατέφυγε για να αναπνεύσει, υποτίθεται, αέρα ελευθερίας και όπου τελικά βίωσε τη στέρηση όλων των ανθρώπινων δικαιωμάτων του.

Τον Αύγουστο του 2014 ο Majid είχε αφεθεί ελεύθερος από τις Κεντρικές Φυλακές, όπου εξέτιε άλλη μια ποινή, 6μηνης φυλάκισης, από τον Απρίλη του 2014, μετά που συνελήφθη στο αεροδρόμιο Πάφου με πλαστό δανέζικο διαβατήριο, σε μια απελπισμένη προσπάθειά του να φύγει από την Κύπρο. O Μιχάλης Παρασκευάς με ενημέρωσε χθες, ότι ειδοποιήθηκε πρόσφατα, ότι η έφεση που καταχώρισε εναντίον της «εξωφρενικής» ποινής φυλάκισης του πελάτη του, ορίστηκε για ακρόαση στις 20 Μαΐου 2015, δηλαδή έναν ολόκληρο χρόνο μετά την καταδίκη του (!).

Σε εκείνη την έφεσή του στο Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο, ο Μιχάλης Παρασκευάς επεσήμανε, μεταξύ άλλων, ότι το κυπριακό κράτος, με τη συμπεριφορά του απέναντι στον άνθρωπο αυτό, τον έσπρωξε στο απώτατο όριο της εξαθλίωσης. «Δεν του έδωσε την άδεια να εργαστεί και αυτός, όπως το ίδιο το Πρωτόδικο Δικαστήριο έκανε εύρημα, ζούσε ως ζητιάνος μόνο από τη φιλανθρωπία κάποιων καλών ανθρώπων που φιλοτιμήθηκαν, σε αντίθεση με το κράτος, να τον βοηθήσουν. Ο εφεσείων δεν μπορεί να απελαθεί! Ο εφεσείων δεν επιθυμεί να μείνει στην Κύπρο! Θέλει να φύγει από την Κύπρο και το κυπριακό κράτος δεν τον αφήνει, ούτε να μείνει, ούτε να φύγει. Τι άλλες επιλογές είχε αυτός ο άνθρωπος; Καμιά απολύτως επιλογή…

»Η απελευθέρωσή του έγινε υπό τον όρο να αρχίσει αμέσως τις διαδικασίες απόκτησης διαβατηρίου, ενώ η εισήγηση της Επιτρόπου Διοικήσεως, ήταν να μην τεθούν όροι συνεργασίας του παραπονούμενου με την πρεσβεία του Ιράν, για έκδοση ταξιδιωτικών εγγράφων. Τι θα κάνει τώρα αυτός ο άνθρωπος; Ποιος θα μας πει; Στην πραγματικότητα, βρίσκεται ξανά στο πουθενά, αφού δεν θα ρισκάρει ν’ αποταθεί για διαβατήριο στην ιρανική πρεσβεία (αλλά και να αποταθεί, δεν θα του εκδώσουν). Οπότε, θα θεωρείται πάλι παράνομος στην Κύπρο. Πρέπει το κράτος μας να βρει μια λύση, γι’ αυτές τις πεταμένες ψυχές των Ιρανών αιτητών ασύλου».

 

 

http://cyprus-mail.com/2015/02/03/social-insurance-disobedience-to-be-heard-on-may-5/

 

Social insurance ‘disobedience’ to be heard on May 5

Michalis Paraskeva was greeted by 50 or so supporters outside the courthouse

By Constantinos Psillides

LAWYER and civil activist Michalis Paraskeva, 38, will appear before court on May 5, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday, for the first hearing of his much publicised refusal to pay social insurance contributions.

The lawyer was originally going to appear before the Supreme Court on November 15. The judge made clear that May 5 is the final date of the hearing and that she won’t grant any more continuances.

Paraskeva considers his refusal as an act of civil disobedience, in response to what he claims is a plan by the government to write-off a €7.2bn debt to the Social Insurance Fund (SIF).

The massive debt to the SIF is the result of years of governments borrowing from the fund to plug holes in public finances. The troika of lenders requested in 2012 for that debt to be written off, although the state has yet to do so.

Talking to the Cyprus Mail, Paraskeva said that he remains optimistic. “Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to swim across an ocean. It’s a daily struggle but I’m optimistic. We are going to see this through,” he said as 50 people gathered outside the courtroom to voice their support.

Paraskeva believes that the state will trigger the collapse of the SIF if it writes off the debt. He maintains that the banks and the state are to blame for the financial meltdown and considers taking money off the SIF as an attack on the people.

A government source told the Cyprus Mail in November that the troika doesn’t consider the debt to the SIF as part of the country’s national debt, regarding it a “logistical anomaly that needs to be rectified.”

The source, an expert in economics, had told the Mail that the government never intended to pay the money back.

If found guilty, Paraskeva could face jail time and probably disbarment.

Paraskeva is no stranger to controversy and legal battles against the state. As a lawyer, he specialises in cases of ill-treated immigrants and clashed on numerous occasions with former Immigration head Annie Shiakalli.

Paraskeva is also active on social media. He regularly tweets from his account @osr55 (osr – only solution revolution) and he also writes on his blog osr55.wordpress.com.

A self proclaimed “libertarian socialist”, Paraskeva told the Cyprus Mail in October 2013 that he believes in fighting the system from within, instead of going to marches and throwing Molotov cocktails at police.

The lawyer had said then that he vehemently refuses to compromise. “If you want to be a slave, and a worm, and to crawl, then go ahead and do it, my friend – but I don’t accept that. OK? I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, and let them do what they want to me.”

 

Άρθρο στην Cyprus Mail: ‘I knew what I was getting into’ says refusenik lawyer

 

http://cyprus-mail.com/2014/11/23/i-knew-what-i-was-getting-into-says-refusenik-lawyer/

Michalis Paraskeva

By Constantinos Psillides

LAWYER and civil activist Michalis Paraskeva, 38, is willing to see his civil disobedience act through to the end, no matter the cost, he told the Sunday Mail. Paraskeva, who made headlines for going to court because he refused to pay his social insurance contributions for the past nine months said he is not deterred by the possibility that he will probably end up in jail.

“Look. I believe in straight talk and this is probably how this will end up. The court will at some point order me to pay my social insurance contributions, as they do in all of these cases. I will refuse to comply. Failing to follow a court order constitutes a criminal offence punishable by a jail sentence. This is the road I’m heading down,” he said.

“I knew what I was getting into when I made my choices. I don’t regret anything. What will come, will come. I’m ready for this. Standing on principle and keeping your dignity and self respect is far more important to me than to back down now.”

Paraskeva is currently in court defending himself against the state. The lawyer was taken to court for refusing to pay his taxes, in response to what he claims is a plan by the government to write-off a €7.2bn debt to the Social Insurance Fund (SIF).

The massive debt to the SIF is the result of years of governments borrowing from the fund to plug holes in public finances. The troika of lenders requested in 2012 that the debt to be written off, although the state has yet to do so.

Paraskeva argues that by doing so the state would trigger the collapse of the SIF. He maintains that the banks and the state are at fault for the financial meltdown and he considers taking money from off the SIF as an attack on the people.

A government source has said case is far more complicated than it looks and that the troika does not even consider the debt to the SIF as part of the island’s national debt but merely a “logistical anomaly that needed to be rectified.”

The source said the state never intended to pay back the debt and that taking money from the SIF was a common practice in many countries. If the state didn’t get the money from the SIF it would probably have to raise taxes. Also, the source said the state would always be there to provide the necessary benefits.

But Paraskeva is not convinced.

“If the state didn’t plan to pay the money back then it shouldn’t borrow it in the first place. That’s the people’s money and the people want it back. The government should be working on a strategy for returning the money to SIF not writing the debt off because they weren’t planning on paying it back anyway. That’s what I think, that’s why I got into this and I don’t care what any unnamed government official has to say,” he said.

A jail sentence is the least of Paraskeva’s troubles should the court case goes sour, since he is also very likely to end up unemployed. A lawyer who specialises in cases of ill-treated immigrants, he has clashed on numerous occasions with former immigration head Annie Shiakalli. Paraskeva could also face disbarment should he end up in jail.

“Believe it or not, a criminal offence is not grounds enough for a lawyer to be disbarred,” he said. “I know of lawyers who have done much worse and are still allowed to practice. It’s all up to the Cyprus Bar Association really. They are the ones calling the shots. After I receive a jail sentence verdict they might allow me to continue my practice or make an example out of me and revoke my licence. I honestly don’t know what their intentions are. I guess we’ll find out,” he mused.

Paraskeva appeared in court on November 15. Around 60 other people went along to support him, including ten Iranian immigrants.

“You have to realise that we the people have the power. We can actually force the state to behave. Now, around 50 people refuse to pay their social insurance contribution. Imagine if that number was in the thousands,” Paraskeva wrote in his blog, osr55.wordpress, in a post titled “United we stand divided we fall”.

OSR stands for “Only Solution Revolution”.

He is also heading a 11-person committee called Initiative for the Social Control and Self-Management of the Social Insurance Fund, which has already sent letters to all competent authorities demanding SIF legislation reform so it can be audited.

He will not compromise.  “If you want to be a slave, and a worm, and to crawl, then go ahead and do it, my friend – but I don’t accept that. OK? I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, and let them do what they want to me.”

The court has adjourned until February 2, 2015.

 

Η δημοκρατία σας βρωμάει χούντα… Η απόλυτη αυθαιρεσία κ ο θεσμικός ρατσισμός στην πράξη…Δύο επιστολές από δικηγόρο με τις οποίες ζητούσε τα διατάγματα π είναι απαραίτητα να πάει δικαστήριο έμειναν απλά ανάπαντητες και τελικά απέλασαν ΠΑΡΑΝΟΜΑ έναν άνθρωπο έτσι απλά…Αρνούνται ακόμα και να σχολιάσουν στην Cyprus Mail εφημερίδα όλες αυτές τις καταγγελίες

 

Δύο άνθρωποι συναντώνται, κοιτάζει ο ένας τον άλλο ερωτεύονται και αποφασίζουν να είναι μαζί!

Δύο άνθρωποι αποφασίζουν να μοιραστούν την ζωή τους, να παντρευτούν και να ζήσουν ευτυχισμένοι και αγαπημένοι μαζί……

…αν ζείτε στην Κύπρο όμως και τυγχάνει να μην είστε ποτλιτογραφημένοι στην θεική ράτσα της αρείας καθαρόαιμης κυπριακής φυλής ξανασκεφτείτε το σημείο που λέει «δύο άνθρωποι αποφασίζουν»

Στην Κύπρο μας την θαλασσοδαρμένη, το νησί της Αφροδίτης και του έρωτα δεν είναι μόνο αυτοί οι δύο άνθρωποι που θα πρέπει να το αποφασίσουν

Θα πρέπει να το αποφασίσει τουλάχιστον ακόμα ένας άνθρωπος

Ένας άνθρωπος που εδώ και 10 χρόνια έχει ριζώσει στο ιμιγκρέισιον της Κύπρου μας

Ένας άνθρωπος που εδώ και 10 χρόνια είναι ο απόλυτος άρχων επί του ποιος παντρεύεται ποιος μένει και ποιος φεύγει από το καλοκλάγαθο αυτό νησί με τους φιλόξενους ανθρώπους  (εδώ κάνουμε εμετό από συγκίνηση)

Ένας άνθρωπος που εδώ και 10 χρόνια για κάποιος λόγο κανένας δεν τολμά να τον ακουμπήσει παρόλο που έχει εξευτελίσει άπειρες φορές την Κύπρο μας το χρυσοπράσινο φύλο ριγμένο στον ρατσιστικό οχετό της κοινωνίας που συντηρεί το μίσος

Από όπου και να το πιάσεις βρωμάει

Ο θεσμικός ρατσισμός σε όλα τα επίπεδα που δεν σέβεται σε κανένα σημείο την ανθρώπινη υπόσταση, που δεν σέβεται σε κανένα σημείο όσα κατακτήθηκαν και ονομάζονται κράτος δικαίου που σέβεται τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα και μπλα μπλα

Μόνο από αυτό εδώ το μπλοκ έχουν γραφτεί μυριάδες ιστορίες αυθαιρεσίας που δεν σέβονται τα αυτονόητα όπως είναι πχ αποφάσεις του Ανωτάτου Δικαστηρίου που διατάσσουν την απελευθέρωση ανθρώπων

Χ Ο Υ Ν Τ Α ! ! Παρά την τεράστια νίκη με Αποφαση Ανωτάτου στην αίτηση habeas corpus 152/10-Αμεση διαταγή για απελευθέρωση- Παρακοή Αποφασης Ανωτάτου από το Κράτος!!!!!!! ρατσιστές Σαββίδη+Σιακαλή που δεν τον αφήνουν ελεύθερο!!!!Αφηνίασαν!! Χούντα κυριολεκτικά

Χ Ο Υ Ν Τ Α ! ! Παρά την τεράστια νίκη με Αποφαση Ανωτάτου στην αίτηση habeas corpus 152/10-Αμεση διαταγή για απελευθέρωση- Παρακοή Αποφασης Ανωτάτου από το Κράτος!!!!!!! ρατσιστές Σαββίδη+Σιακαλή που δεν τον αφήνουν ελεύθερο!!!!Αφηνίασαν!! Χούντα κυριολεκτικά

 
ΧΟΥΝΤΑ! Απόφαση Ανωτάτου Δικαστηρίου που διατάσσει την απελευθέρωση μετανάστη που κρατείται ΠΑΡΑΝΟΜΑ για 12 μήνες ΔΕΝ εφαρμόζεται από το κράτος!!!! Θαύμασε το κράτος και τους θεσμούς σου φιλήσυχε φιλειρηνικέ πατριωτάκη και έρχεται η σειρά σου

ΧΟΥΝΤΑ! Απόφαση Ανωτάτου Δικαστηρίου που διατάσσει την απελευθέρωση μετανάστη που κρατείται ΠΑΡΑΝΟΜΑ για 12 μήνες ΔΕΝ εφαρμόζεται από το κράτος!!!! Θαύμασε το κράτος και τους θεσμούς σου φιλήσυχε φιλειρηνικέ πατριωτάκη και έρχεται η σειρά σου

 

Καταπέλτης 36σελιδο ριπορτ της Διεθνούς Αμνηστία που καταγράφει με λεπτομέρεια πως η κύπρος (ΔΕΝ) σέβεται τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα – Τιμωρία χωρίς Έγκλημα από την χώρα της υποκρισίας και του θράσσους

https://osr55.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/%CE%BA%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%B1%CF%80%CE%AD%CE%BB%CF%84%CE%B7%CF%82-36%CF%83%CE%B5%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%B4%CE%BF-%CF%81%CE%B9%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%81%CF%84-%CF%84%CE%B7%CF%82-%CE%B4%CE%B9%CE%B5%CE%B8%CE%BD%CE%BF%CF%8D/

ardian: Cyprus criticised over treatment of asylum seekers EU country is accused of ignoring supreme court decisions and keeping asylum seekers in unhealthy conditions

Guardian: Cyprus criticised over treatment of asylum seekers EU country is accused of ignoring supreme court decisions and keeping asylum seekers in unhealthy conditions

Η άγνοια νόμου από τους δικαστές που επιβάλλουν φυλάκιση ενώ ο νόμος ορίζει ρητά ότι δεν υπόκειται σε φυλάκιση… Τα παπαγαλάκια που σπέρνουν το μίσος και τον ρατσισμό και στο απυρόβλητο τα παράσιτα τράπεζες/βιομηχανοι/εφοπλιστές κλπ
https://osr55.wordpress.com/2012/11/10

 
Έκκληση για βοηθεία στον Majid ο οποίος κρατειτο παράνομα πέραν των 4 χρόνων, το Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο διέταξε την απελευθέρωση του στις 22/11/2012 αλλά οι κυπριακές αρχές δεν τον αφήνουν να ζήσει με όση αξιοπρέπεια του έμεινε. Κόλλησε Ηπατίτιδα Γ στις φυλακές και είναι μετέωρος στο πουθενά. Επιστολή στον Υπ Εσ και κοινοποίηση Ευρ Επιτροπή, Διεθνή Αμνηστία, Επίτροπο Διοικήσεως Future World Center

Έκκληση για βοηθεία στον Majid ο οποίος κρατειτο παράνομα πέραν των 4 χρόνων, το Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο διέταξε την απελευθέρωση του στις 22/11/2012 αλλά οι κυπριακές αρχές δεν τον αφήνουν να ζήσει με όση αξιοπρέπεια του έμεινε. Κόλλησε Ηπατίτιδα Γ στις φυλακές και είναι μετέωρος στο πουθενά. Επιστολή στον Υπ Εσ και κοινοποίηση Ευρ Επιτροπή, Διεθνή Αμνηστία, Επίτροπο Διοικήσεως Future World Center

 
Ίδιες υποθέσεις δύο διαφορετικοί δικαστές δύο διαφορετικές αποφάσεις! Μην εμπιστεύεστε την δικαιοσύνη…τάδε έφη Πέτρος Κληρίδης ΜΗΝ εμπιστεύεστε τους θεσμούς του κράτους..τάδε έφη δικαστής ανωτάτου δικαστηρίου Καλλής… εγώ τι να πω;; αντε και γαμήσου ηλίθιε φιλειρηνικέ τζοιμισμένε κυπρέε

Ίδιες υποθέσεις δύο διαφορετικοί δικαστές δύο διαφορετικές αποφάσεις! Μην εμπιστεύεστε την δικαιοσύνη…τάδε έφη Πέτρος Κληρίδης ΜΗΝ εμπιστεύεστε τους θεσμούς του κράτους..τάδε έφη δικαστής ανωτάτου δικαστηρίου Καλλής… εγώ τι να πω;; αντε και γαμήσου ηλίθιε φιλειρηνικέ τζοιμισμένε κυπρέε

 
Ασύστολες παραβιάσεις ρητών ορισμών του νόμου…επιβολή φυλάκισης για ένα αδίκημα που δεν υφίσταται και ρητά ο νόμος ορίζει ότι δεν υπόκειτιαι σε ποινή φυλάκισης… η αυθαιρεσία του κυπριακού κράτους στο μεγαλείο του σε όλες τις βαθμίδες μέχρι το ανώτατο δικαστήριο

Ασύστολες παραβιάσεις ρητών ορισμών του νόμου…επιβολή φυλάκισης για ένα αδίκημα που δεν υφίσταται και ρητά ο νόμος ορίζει ότι δεν υπόκειτιαι σε ποινή φυλάκισης… η αυθαιρεσία του κυπριακού κράτους στο μεγαλείο του σε όλες τις βαθμίδες μέχρι το ανώτατο δικαστήριο

 
Απόφαση ολομέλειας Ανωτάτου Δικαστηρίου….η Κύπρος αποτελεί την τραγελαφική εξαίρεση….. η Ευρωπαική Επιτροπή έφτασε στο σημείο να παρέμβει μετά από αντινομική και πέραν πάση λογικής απόφασης του Ανωτάτου Δικαστηρίου κράζοντας τους και αναγκάζοντας την κυπρουλα μας να αλλάξει το νόμο
https://osr55.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/

 

Πλέον έχουν ξεφύγει τόσο που δεν ξέρεις που έχουν πάει….

Για να μπορέσεις να καταχωρήσεις προσφυγή στο Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο σύμφωνα με νέες οδηγίες με εγκύκλιο του ημερομηνίας 3 Δεκεμβρίου 2013 θα πρέπει να καταχωρήσεις μαζί και την διοικητική πράξη που προσβάλλεις, δηλαδή το διάταγμα απέλασης, το διάταγμα με το οποίο κηρύττουν τον γάμο εικονικό κλπ

Στις 20 Ιανουαρίου 2013 ημερομηνία που γυρίστηκε το βίντεο που μιλά η καημένη η κοπέλα που είχε την ατυχία να έρτει μες τουντον τόπο

έγινε επίσκεψη στα κρατητήρια Μενόγιας στον κρατούμενο σύζυγο της κοπέλας

Συνελλήφθηκε στις 17 Δεκεμβρίου 2013 και  δεν έλαβε ποτέ οποιοδήποτε έντυπο με τον οποίο να του γνωστοποιείται ο λόγος σύλληψης και κράτησης του καθώς επίσης και το δικαίωμα του να προσφύγει εντός 75 ημερών στο Ανώτατο Δικαστήριο κατά αυτής της πράξης

Εντός των κρατητηρίων ζητήθηκε από τον υπεύθυνο αξιωματικό να δοθεί στον δικηγόρο του τουλάχιστον αντίγραφο των διαταγμάτων κράτησης, αλλά ο αξιωματικός υπηρεσίας αρνήθηκε λέγοντας ότι θα πρέπει να αποταθεί στο ιμιγκρέισιον…….

Την επόμενη μέρα 21 Ιανουαρίου 2014 με επιστολή που στάλθηκε σε όλες τις σχετικές υπηρεσίες, στον ίδιο τον υπουργό εσωτερικών, τον γενικό διευθυντή, την διευθύντρια τμήματος μετανάστευσης, τα τμήματα μετανάστευσης λάρνακας λευκωσίας, το τμήμα του υπουργείου εσωτερικών που ασχολείται με εικονικούς γάμους και κατόπιν τηλεφωνικής  επικοινωνίας με αυτό το τμήμα και σε ακόμα έναν λειτουργό του ιμιγκρέισιον…. ζητήθηκε με αυτή την επιστολή να δοθεί στον δικηγόρο του ανθρώπου που κρατείται το διάταγμα, ή τα διατάγματα με τα οποία κρατείται ούτως ώστε να μπορεί  να ασκήσει τα δικαιώματα του ενώπιον δικαστηρίου

Καμιά απάντηση…..

Καμιά απάντηση ούτε και την επόμενη μέρα στις 22 Ιανουαρίου 2014 ούτε καν στις επανειλημμένες τηλεφωνικές κλήσεις που είτε δεν απαντούσαν είτε κτυπούσαν κρατητμένες…..

Στις 23 Ιανουαρίου 2014 αποστέλλεται άλλη μια επιστολή καυτηριάζοντας άλλη μια φορά την κορυφαία αυτή παρανομία του ρατστιστικού αυτού άθλιου τμήματος της τύπισσας που εδώ και 10 χρόνια βασανίζει ανθρώπους μαζί με τους συνεργούς της  και ζητώντας άλλη μια φορά τα διατάγματα…

καμιά απάντηση και πάλι….

http://cyprus-mail.com/2014/01/25/lawyer-says-immigration-wont-hand-over-clients-documents/

OCAL NEWS January 25, 2014 – 52 Comments

Lawyer says immigration won’t hand over client’s documents

Congo Mahamoudou has been detained at Menoyia since December 17

By Constantinos Psillides

Human rights lawyer Michalis Paraskeva yesterday accused immigration of refusing to provide him with the detention order for Congo Mahamoudou, detained at Menoyia since December 17.

In a letter sent to, among others, immigration, and the office of the attorney general, Paraskeva demands to be given the order through which his client was arrested and detained, so he can proceed with defending Mahamoudou in court.

“I really don’t know what else to do. I asked them repeatedly for the order but they simply won’t hand it over,” said Papaskeva. He said by law, detention is only reserved for people about to be deported.

“Besides that, the law clearly stipulates that he can only be detained for a few days, awaiting deportation. He’s been there for over a month,” he added.

Mahamoudou is married to Tatiana Chripkova, a Slovak national who is on her eleventh day of hunger strike outside the detention centre, asking for the release of her spouse.

Chripkova has been working in Cyprus for the past seven years and had recently found employment in the UK, where she said she is planning to move with her husband. While away on work, the Famagusta branch of the police immigration office declared their marriage was one of convenience and he was immediately arrested and placed at the Menoyia centre.

Mahamoudou was previously given a residency permit (as a family member of an EU citizen) that expires in 2017. The permit has since been revoked.

Chripkova returned to Cyprus once she was notified about her husband’s arrest and has filed a petition for him to be released but received no answer.

She blasted the authorities saying that her husband missed his appointment at the British High Commission offices in Cyprus, for an interview regarding his petition to enter the UK and be reunited with his wife.

Chripkova told the Cyprus Mail that she was not leaving the detention centre, even if it kills her. “We have a real marriage. I love my husband and we just want to leave for the UK to work. I am not leaving here. I don’t care what happens,” said Chripkova.

Immigrant rights advocate KISA said that there was no clear process for deciding what constitutes a marriage of convenience. “They declare marriages to be false, without sufficient evidence and deport people merely on suspicion,” said KISA.

Immigration Offices and department head Annie Shakalli could not be reached for comment

 

Ξημερώματα 29 Ιανουαρίου 2014, ώρα 4 το πρωί κτυπά το τηλέφωνο και κλαίγοντας η γυναίκα του Μαχαμούντου λέει ότι της έστειλε μήνυμα να ετοιμαστεί και έρχονται να τον πάρουν για απέλαση!!

6 ώρα το πρωί τον παίρνουν για απέλαση…………………..

 

Η λέξη χούντα δεν περιγράφει στο ελάχιστον αυτό που συμβαίνει σε αυτό τον τόπο

http://cyprus-mail.com/2014/01/30/due-process-thrown-out-the-window-as-one-more-deported/

LOCAL NEWS January 30, 2014 – 101 Comments

‘Due process’ thrown out the window as one more deported

Mahamoudou was held at Menoyia detention centre before being deported yesterday

By Constantinos Psillides

OMBUDSWOMAN Eliza Savvidou will be launching a probe into the case of Congo Mahamoudou, a Burkina Faso national, who was deported yesterday after he was denied due process, according to his lawyer Michalis Paraskeva.

The decision to launch a probe was reached after Mahamoudou’s lawyer accused the Immigration Service of withholding documents that he needed to appeal the deportation order. He claims that his client was deported without having the chance to take his case to court.

Paraskeva claims that he made repeated attempts to secure the order by which his client was detained and deported but Immigration refused to comply.

According to the procedure, detaining an immigrant is the final step and should be reserved strictly for deportations. Before seeing the inside of a prison cell, an immigrant has the right to challenge the order before court.

Asked about the case, the Ombudswoman was adamant: “This is unheard of. Government services cannot just refuse to provide a lawyer with proper documentation and suspend due process. Even if they have a valid case against an immigrant, they should give him the right to appeal.

“My office will look into the case and if the accusations are true we will submit a report”, said Savvidou, although she wasn’t very optimistic on the report’s effectiveness.

She confirmed that the deportation order can be rescinded, if there was a problem with the procedure followed.

“His name will be taken off the stop-list and he will be allowed to fly back to the island,” Savvidou said.

Mahamoudou’s case wasn’t unknown to the Ombudswoman’s office. A delegation visited the Menoyia detention centre on January 15, in the wake of a recent suicide wave at the central prisons. Savvidou heard about the case and asked the Interior Ministry for information. She never received it.

Mahamoudou is married to Tatiana Chripkova, a Slovak national, but their marriage was deemed one of convenience by the Immigration Services and he was taken to the Menoyia detention centre on December 17, from where he was deported.

“This is a clear violation of human rights. A complete disregard for the rule of law. They have arrested a person based on their own assumptions, imprisoned him, deported him and all without giving him the chance to appear in court,” the lawyer said.

Mahamoudou was married to Chripkova since 2011 and he was granted a residency permit that expired. Chripkova has been working in Cyprus for the past seven years and had recently found employment in the UK, where she said she was planning to move with her husband. While she was away, Immigration Services declared that their marriage was one of convenience and Mahamoudou was arrested.

Chripkova returned to Cyprus once she was notified of her husband’s arrest and filed a petition for him to be released but received no answer.

She blasted the authorities saying that her husband missed his appointment at the British High Commission in Nicosia for an interview regarding his petition to enter the UK and be reunited with his wife.

Chripkova staged a hunger strike outside Menoyia asking that her husband be released so they could leave Cyprus.

Once she was informed on her husband’s deportation, Chripkova contacted the Slovak embassy and filed an official complaint against the state and the Immigration Services.

Immigrant rights advocate KISA told the Cyprus Mail that there was no clear process for deciding what constitutes a marriage of convenience. “They declare marriages to be false, without sufficient evidence and deport people merely on suspicion,” said KISA.

The Cyprus Mail has made repeated attempts to secure a comment or response from Immigration Services officials but with no success.

 

 

CyBc radio 15/11/13 interview from Rosie Charalambous Cyprus: Violations of fundemantal rights-Cyprus Mail: Migration has had a licence to abuse its powers for too long

 

 

http://cyprus-mail.com/2013/11/10/families-split-as-parents-detained/

Families split as parents detained

Despite being the father of a girl with his Bulgarian wife, migration department claims that Muhammad Nadeem’s marriage is one of convenience

By Poly Pantelides

TWO top state officials are investigating several cases involving children whose parents have been illegally detained under threat of deportation by the migration department.

Ombudswoman, Eliza Savvidou, and the Child Commissioner, Leda Koursoumba, have highlighted a number of shocking cases in which the migration department have left teenagers to fend for themselves after detaining both parents, or have deprived children of at least one parent on charges of marriage of convenience based on false or flimsy evidence.

“We are observing a growing harshness of attitude by the migration department that is possibly related to the xenophobic climate that is being developed in Cyprus,” Savvidou told the Sunday Mail this week.

Complaints over alleged mistreatment by the migration department have been on the increase in the past year, she said. Just last year, her office received almost 300 complaints over the migration department alone.

One case involves a three-year-old girl who has been deprived of her Bulgarian mother and Pakistani father because the migration department claims the couple’s marriage is one of convenience. However a DNA test has proven paternity, while the migration department claimed the woman was pregnant when she got married, even though her daughter was born eleven months after their marriage.

Following an August news report in daily newspaper Simerini, the Child Commissioner wrote to the interior ministry and police over the seeming violations of child protection laws, while the Ombudswoman asked for the mother’s immediate release. Three months later, Zoya Mitova Margaritova remains in detention. Muhammad Zeshan Nadeem, her husband and proven father of their daughter Laiba, was arrested last week.

Savvidou said the migration department could not justify claims of a marriage of convenience when a DNA test proved fatherhood and has sent yet another letter this week asking for the parents’ immediate release. The Child Commissioner’s office has also written again to authorities.

Another case involves a 15-year-old living alone because her Chinese parents are held in the holding facility in Menoyia for immigrants awaiting deportation. Her story was one of the examples raised of alleged abuse of power during a discussion this week attended by Savvidou.

Those present were told the girl was unwilling to take up on the welfare department’s offer of a home and lives alone in her family’s apartment, according to founder of non-governmental organisation Cyprus Stop Trafficking, Androulla Christofidou-Henriques.

In an open letter to the head of migration Anny Shakallis, who did not take up the invitation to attend to the event, she wrote: “I find it very hard that a mother could make such a harsh choice, to deprive a child of its [own] mother,” Christofidou-Henriques said.

Savvidou said authorities could have chosen different arrangements to keep the family intact or at least to let the mother free after confiscating her travel documents and asking her to regularly report to police.

Carmella and Fadel Hijazie

“It makes no sense to keep [the mother] in prison and leave the child alone to roam the streets. They must understand their responsibilities, if something happens it will be the Cypriot Republic that will be accountable,” she said.

In another case, a young couple have approached the Sunday Mail because the husband, a Lebanese married to a British woman, has been held in Menoyia since March, kept away from his young children as he also awaits deportation. Fadel and Carmella Hijazie have been living in Cyprus for six years and have two boys, three-year-old Alex and eight-month-old Luca. Carmella’s parents own property in Cyprus (Carmella has Greek Cypriot roots), and Fadel has been paying social insurance contributions. But Fadel has been away from his family for over seven months and was detained just a month after his youngest son was born. Their lawyer Andreas Pelecanos said the relevant authorities have not explained their decisions to detain and deport Fadel.

His Supreme Court appeal keeps getting postponed while he waits in detention. The latest court date is for December.

“Basically he is a foreigner and they want him out irrespective of the fact he has a European wife with two children,” Carmella said. “So has this country completely gone to the dogs that they are now looking to separate perfectly happy and healthy families?”

The law says depriving children of their parents, and detaining people for deportation should be a measure of last resort. But even the courts are sometimes too slow to act.

For example, in late October a Pakistani man and father of a half-Cypriot child was deported because the Supreme Court would not issue a same-day interim order to stop authorities from deporting him, his lawyer Michalis Paraskevas said. Instead, the judge set a November 5 case to hear the case, too late for the four-year-old child and his father.

“In this, the judge was complicit in depriving a child of his father,” Paraskevas said, adding that Supreme Court judges tended to be very tolerant of the “migration department’s arbitrary policies”.

The length of detention for purposes of deportation should be up to six months, although the Sunday Mail has previously reported on cases of lengthy detention, such as the 47-year-old Iranian scientist who was held for over nine months. According to human rights’ laws, the courts should process such cases as quick as possible.

Paraskevas, who is also the lawyer of the parents of three-year-old Laiba, is not the only one who has been issuing warnings.

Pelecanos, Fadel and Carmella’s lawyer, said arrest and deportation orders tend to be arbitrary. The orders take

Carmella and her sons Alex and Luca

a person’s freedom away, sever family ties, and take people’s jobs away, he said. Authorities also break the law by delaying processing the cases in the Supreme Court. And because the Supreme Court only looks at the administrative nature of the issue, i.e. the legality of a previous order, the migration department simply issues a new order, “so they don’t have to release successful applicants, who grow weary waiting for a new hearing, again while in detention,” Pelecanos said.
Despite repeated phonecalls Anny Shakallis did not respond to a request for comment.
How migration breaks the law

The migration department and the interior ministry that signs off its department’s decisions, tend to contravene a vast array of European directives, human rights directives, and case law, all meant to protect people and families.

One such contravention relates to “attributing an assumption of marriage of convenience to every mixed marriage” where one partner has not sorted their migration papers yet, an Ombudswoman report from February said.

The report said EU case law directly opposed a sweeping approach in such matters, such as the one the migration department adopts. The same report refers to a Supreme Court decision talking of the “legalistic way” in which migration department treated one third country national. He had been waiting for a year for a necessary document certifying he had not been married before, so he could marry his partner, a naturalised Cypriot.

Instead, when he got randomly arrested, he was immediately handed with a deportation order. The court said the department did not act in good faith, did not act within reasonable timeframes and took advantage of an irrelevant set of events. The court called migration to respect the rights of people, as enshrined in the country’s constitution and European laws. Meanwhile, the European Commission reminded its member states in 2011 they should not be conducting systematic checks on marriages of convenience, but could only investigate “isolated cases where there are well-founded suspicions of abuse [of the law]”.

Ombudswoman Eliza Savvidou said they understand the need to deal with real cases of marriages of convenience. But she added that even when the data does not point to a marriage of convenience, there were instances of Cypriots married to a foreigner, whether EU citizens or otherwise, who were put under “huge inconveniences” of the like of knocking on people’s door to check if they live together, checking their personal items, and asking intimate questions about their sex life.

“There’s a sort of sweep operation going on, if I may use that term,” she said.

The migration department often delays responding to the Ombudswoman’s investigations, sometimes needing five reminders before getting back, and even then, responses are not always adequate, Savvidou said.

Other policies, such as forcing mixed race couples to prove paternity via DNA tests are not based on any laws, Savvidou has said in her annual report.

In her own annual reports Child Commissioner Leda Koursoumba has highlighted the absence by the state of a comprehensive policy on migration, and even a “refusal” by the relevant authorities to implement what is meant to be binding by law.

“There have been cases where both parents of children were detained for the purpose of deportation,” Koursoumba said in her annual report. In her 2011 report she also mentioned complaints by families whose main breadwinner was detained for deportation, leaving the family vulnerable without a financial income.

Koursoumba has called the state – from which the migration department’s policies are ultimately derived – for a comprehensive policy so that matters involving children are regulated with clarity and in accordance to children’s rights.

http://cyprus-mail.com/2013/11/12/our-view-migration-has-had-a-licence-to-abuse-its-powers-for-too-long/#prettyPhoto

Our View: Migration has had a licence to abuse its powers for too long

Despite being the father of a girl with his Bulgarian wife, migration department claims that Muhammad Nadeem’s marriage is one of convenience

THE MIGRATION Department has always been a law unto itself. With discretionary powers it exercises as a matter of routine, rather than in exceptional cases, it operates as like a government department of a totalitarian regime, in which no individual rights were recognised and rule of law was an irrelevance. Concepts like accountability and transparency are unheard of as everyone, from the director down to the last official, can take the most outrageous decision with impunity.

Several of the Department’s abuses were highlighted in a report in the last issue of the Sunday Mail, which quoted the Ombudswoman, Eliza Savvidou as saying that complaints against migration officials had been on the increase in the past year. Savvidou said: “We are observing a growing harshness of attitude by the migration department that is possibly related to the xenophobic climate that is being developed in Cyprus.” The Ombudswoman also mentioned how the department often failed to respond to requests for information relating to cases and when it did, this was inadequate.

In the cases reported by the Sunday Mail, the main charge made by the department against foreigners was that they had entered a ‘marriage of convenience’. A Lebanese man has been held at the Menoyia centre for seven months, awaiting deportation, on the grounds that he had entered a marriage of convenience with an EU citizen. The couple have two young children (aged 3 and 8 months) but the migration department has decreed that he was in a marriage of convenience and had to be deported.

In another case, a Pakistani man who had a child with a Bulgarian woman and proved he was the father by DNA test, was arrested for deportation because he had entered a marriage of convenience according to migration. That married couples with children are accused of entering a marriage of convenience, is an illustration of how migration officers abuse their powers.

Savvidou said the migration officials would go to people’s homes to check if they lived together, examine their personal items and ask questions about their sex life to establish if they were in a marriage of convenience. Nobody is saying there are no marriages of convenience, aimed at fooling the authorities, but the migration department cannot act indiscriminately, bringing such accusations against whomever it chooses, including couples with families. Do people have ‘children of convenience’ as well?

The problem is that the Department has had a licence to abuse its powers for too long. For more than a decade it has had the same director, who has come to believe – with ample justification as nobody ever challenges her autocratic behaviour – that she can do as she pleases. This attitude is the ethos of the migration department and there will be no change unless the director is replaced and its powers restricted.

http://cyprus-mail.com/2013/10/04/fighting-the-system/

October 4, 2013 – 18 Comments

Fighting the system

Far from having his eyes glaze over when meeting a lawyer specialising in ill treated migrants THEO PANAYIDES meets an energetic anarchist

A few hours after meeting Michalis Paraskevas, I realise it’s impossible to explain to friends and colleagues why I’m so impressed with him. It’s a sad fact of life that people’s eyes glaze over when they hear words like ‘migrants’ and ‘human rights’, and that’s what 36-year-old Michalis does – he’s a lawyer specialising in cases of ill-treated migrants. It didn’t sound like the most exciting interview, at least on paper. I fully expected to be nodding piously while being lectured on how we can all Do Better – but instead I got rage, charisma and waves of furious energy. You wouldn’t think a small, second-floor office on a quiet Nicosia side-street could contain so much energy.

He spits out statute, precedent and relevant statistics with impressive felicity. “I know the law. I know their system – OK?” he explains, ‘they’ being the banks, vested interests and “media of mass deception” behind the system. That “OK?” is one of his repeated phrases (carrying a slight edge, as if to say ‘You got a problem with that?’, an impression reinforced by his savage crew-cut and prominent features), another being “re koumbare”, the Cypriot version of ‘mate’. But it’s not just what Michalis says that makes an impact – it’s also the way his green eyes flash, or the way he’ll rock back and forth in his chair as if about to explode, or the way he’ll bang a fist down on his desk to underline a point, or the way he’ll raise his arms, as if offering himself to an invisible firing squad, when he says something like “I’m an anarchist! Yes, I-am-an-anarchist! But I don’t mean Molotov cocktails and shit like that – OK?”.

Above all, perhaps, it’s the way his mobile phone keeps ringing – eight or nine times in the 90 minutes I spend in his office (there are no secretaries or other lawyers; he’s completely alone, maybe because helping migrants isn’t exactly lucrative work). Most of the calls relate to ongoing cases, though one is from his older brother Marios, who’s just arrived from Greece; there’s also a younger brother who – like Michalis – studied Law in Thessaloniki, the Greek influence being very strong because that’s the kind of family he grew up in, a nationalist family that flew the Greek flag and was proud of it (his dad was a teacher, his mother a school administrator). “My childhood influences were ‘Greece, Cyprus, Enosis’,” he recalls – and he’s outgrown that phase but retains a certain nostalgia: he runs a blog at osr55.wordpress.com (there’s also a YouTube channel at youtube.com/user/osr555, where he uploads videos on a regular basis), the ‘55’ standing, symbolically, for 1955, the year of EOKA. And the ‘osr’? That stands for ‘Only Solution, Revolution’.

It’s easy to scoff at such fiery posturing – but Michalis is one step ahead of the scoffers. “That’s automatism,” he points out when he talks of anarchist communities in Catalonia in 1936 and I wonder (as most people would) if that can really work in the long term. “What you just did there is an automatic response, which we’ve been taught by our family, the schools, the media of mass deception. An automatic response. Automatically, as soon as you hear something like that, you’re like ‘Oh, but human nature…’ and crap like that”. Anarchism can work, he believes, citing not just Catalans but Native American tribes – anarchism in the strict sense of living without a central authority. One of his dreams, which he and his wife are slowly putting into practice, is to build a house that’s entirely “autonomous”, with its own solar power, generators and a plot of land to grow vegetables and raise chickens; “So I won’t need anyone, neither governments nor corporations”.

But the real reason why it’s hard to scoff at Michalis’ revolutionary talk is because he’s not spouting these ideals from the comfort of a desk job or trust fund: he’s in the trenches, fighting the system – so he says – every day and twice on the weekend. He mentions lots of cases in the course of our 90 minutes, most of them punctuated with indignant cries of “they’re crazy, re koumbare!”. The case of the Iranian migrant who spent 55 months in jail while his case was pending. The case of Senthil Thevathas, a former Tamil rebel deported back to Sri Lanka (where he’s now hiding out, trying to avoid execution) – even though the Supreme Court specifically ordered that Thevathas shouldn’t be deported till his case had been examined, an order that was simply ignored by the Department of Migration. The case of a Syrian mother and her 12-year-old child, who only wanted to go to Sweden – and tried to leave Cyprus with a fake passport, which admittedly was wrong, but Migration’s response was to arrest her, leave the child to fend for itself, and order her deported back to war-torn Syria!

immigrants in nicosia

Migration is clearly his nemesis; the Department, says Michalis scathingly, “operates like a common racist”. Most of what he says about department head Anny Shakalli is unfortunately libellous, though he doesn’t care: “Let her sue me, no problem” (he’s already been hauled before disciplinary boards twice, and won his case on both occasions). The stories he tells offer few fist-pumping triumphs; mostly they involve applications for habeas corpus being dismissed, judges being apathetic (or worse), Michalis ranting and raving at heartless officials – all while migrants rot in jail and weep copiously. “Why are you treating us this way?” he recalls the Syrian woman asking, and shakes his head: “I was ashamed. I was ashamed of my country.”

But after all, I venture, there’s a crisis now. We don’t have room for migrants.

“That’s ridiculous!” he snaps back. “First of all, there’s a war in Syria. You think they know Cyprus, and they’re coming here for the halloumi? Most Syrians – maybe 99.9 per cent – want to go to Sweden or Germany. They don’t want to stay in this stinking place!”.

What’s his opinion of Cypriots generally?

“They’re skatopsyshi,” he replies vehemently, meaning they have ‘shit for souls’. “We’re among the most skatopsyshi nations. This society is rotten to the core, there’s no sense of solidarity – you can see that by how they treat the weakest. This society, when they see a weak person lying on the ground, they’ll go and kick them when they’re down. That’s all I have to say”.

The phone rings again. It’s one of his current cases (he has about 80 ongoing cases, which explains why he’s usually in the office from early morning) – an EU citizen married to an Asian man. They have a three-year-old child, with a legally-issued birth certificate naming the man as the father – but the authorities now claim it’s a marriage of convenience, and when the woman went to find out why she wasn’t allowed to work “our friends the stinking cops, the dirtbags, arrested her right in front of her child. Even though you aren’t allowed to jail a mother even for a criminal offence, only for drugs. And she’s a European citizen!” The woman’s been in jail since August 6 (it’s now September 20) – and indeed they’d been planning to deport her that same day, leaving the child behind. “They’re such liars, re koumbare, they’re such liars. I mean, they claim the man isn’t the father – so what, you’re going to leave the child with a stranger?” Michalis intervened, and blocked the deportation – but this morning, right before our interview, had an application for an interim order dismissed by a judge.

“Yes, hi,” he says on the phone now. His English isn’t perfect, and the woman is clearly distraught. “I’m – yes, Michalis, your lawyer, yes…”

A long pause. He listens.

“Listen, listen to me,” he says at last. “Today the judge, unfortunately, they reject the application. We have to make another application. But this will take at least one month…”

Another long pause.

“Listen to me, listen to me, listen to me. I understand. Don’t – listen – when they call you, don’t talk with these people. Don’t talk to them. Tell them ‘call my lawyer’. You understand what I’m telling you?”

Another pause. He raises his voice, as if to drown out her wailing.

“Don’t talk – listen – listen to me very carefully, what I’m gonna tell you. When these people call you, and they say that is from the Immigration, tell them ‘I have a lawyer. Don’t talk with me, talk to my lawyer’. And turn off the telephone. OK? I will make another application on Monday, and we will see what happens…”

He goes on for a few more minutes, ending with a promise to visit her later today at the detention centre where she’s being held “in the middle of nowhere”. It must take its toll, dealing with such cases day after day, trying to calm the distraught and desperate – but Michalis Paraskevas wouldn’t be half as impressive if he were simply doing good work, or even if his anger were a bitter, unhappy kind of anger. What’s great, and invigorating, is the way his anger is creative. It nurtures and sustains him, and goes hand-in-hand – despite everything – with dreams of a better future.

“I have no delusions on what I can offer,” he admits. “Anyone who thinks world revolution is going to start from Cyprus is out of his mind”. But he is nonetheless an anarchist – or a “libertarian socialist,” as he likes to call it – trying to be what 19th-century writer Peter Kropotkin called a “revolutionary spirit” (Kropotkin is one of his influences, along with Bakunin, Malateste and Berkman; he found their texts online, the internet being the new revolutionary frontier). “Nothing is ever lost,” he asserts. “Every struggle leaves something behind”. Even when it feels like he’s banging his head against a brick wall, he can make a tiny difference, or inspire some younger person. “Another world is possible,” he says. “It doesn’t mean it’s coming tomorrow, nor the day after. Maybe I won’t even be alive.” But the hope – the conviction – is there.

Michalis is an athlete. That’s important to note: he’s been cycling all his life, was a Cyprus champion in his teens, won the silver for the whole of Northern Greece during his college years. He talks like an athlete, as when speaking of a televised debate he had with MP Zacharias Koulias: “I demolished him in five minutes!” he says gleefully. “With arguments,” he adds, as if he and Koulias might’ve arm-wrestled instead, or raced their bikes. When he thinks about his life – his work, his beliefs, the seemingly inviolable System – I suspect he thinks like an athlete: it’s all about stamina and determination, and refusing to give up till you’ve wheeled across the finish line.

“Everyone makes their choices in this life,” says Michalis firmly. He cites Pavlos Fyssas, the Greek leftist killed by Golden Dawn supporters in Greece recently; not that he himself wants to die, he adds quickly, but that’s what you do, “you do what you believe in and hope for the best… Today we’re alive, tomorrow we’re not. It goes without saying that I have plans for the future, I want to start a family – but everyone makes their choices. If you want to be a slave, and a worm, and to crawl, then go ahead and do it, my friend – but I don’t accept that. OK? I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, and let them do what they want to me.”

Some may despise him, and that’s okay too: “You see how I am as a person: you either like me or you don’t like me!” But the point is revolution, and “revolution begins in the mind,” he says earnestly. “I chose to be in society. I’m in the system – I’m a lawyer, obviously – and I’m fighting within this system.

“You know what the easiest thing in the world is, Theo? To wear torn clothes, and grow my hair Rasta-style, and go get my fix” – he makes the universal gesture for puffing on a joint – and say ‘I’m an anarchist’. No, my friend, that’s not being an anarchist. An anarchist is a fighting man, who’s fighting for a better society”. Like I said, impressive.

Εφημερίδα Cyprus Mail Συνέντευξη Fighting the system

http://cyprus-mail.com/2013/10/04/fighting-the-system/#

Far from having his eyes glaze over when meeting a lwayer specializing in ill treated migrants THEO PANAYIDES meets an energetic anarchist

 

A few hours after meeting Michalis Paraskevas, I realise it’s impossible to explain to friends and colleagues why I’m so impressed with him. It’s a sad fact of life that people’s eyes glaze over when they hear words like ‘migrants’ and ‘human rights’, and that’s what 36-year-old Michalis does – he’s a lawyer specialising in cases of ill-treated migrants. It didn’t sound like the most exciting interview, at least on paper. I fully expected to be nodding piously while being lectured on how we can all Do Better – but instead I got rage, charisma and waves of furious energy. You wouldn’t think a small, second-floor office on a quiet Nicosia side-street could contain so much energy.

He spits out statute, precedent and relevant statistics with impressive felicity. “I know the law. I know their system – OK?” he explains, ‘they’ being the banks, vested interests and “media of mass deception” behind the system. That “OK?” is one of his repeated phrases (carrying a slight edge, as if to say ‘You got a problem with that?’, an impression reinforced by his savage crew-cut and prominent features), another being “re koumbare”, the Cypriot version of ‘mate’. But it’s not just what Michalis says that makes an impact – it’s also the way his green eyes flash, or the way he’ll rock back and forth in his chair as if about to explode, or the way he’ll bang a fist down on his desk to underline a point, or the way he’ll raise his arms, as if offering himself to an invisible firing squad, when he says something like “I’m an anarchist! Yes, I-am-an-anarchist! But I don’t mean Molotov cocktails and shit like that – OK?”.

Above all, perhaps, it’s the way his mobile phone keeps ringing – eight or nine times in the 90 minutes I spend in his office (there are no secretaries or other lawyers; he’s completely alone, maybe because helping migrants isn’t exactly lucrative work). Most of the calls relate to ongoing cases, though one is from his older brother Marios, who’s just arrived from Greece; there’s also a younger brother who – like Michalis – studied Law in Thessaloniki, the Greek influence being very strong because that’s the kind of family he grew up in, a nationalist family that flew the Greek flag and was proud of it (his dad was a teacher, his mother a school administrator). “My childhood influences were ‘Greece, Cyprus, Enosis’,” he recalls – and he’s outgrown that phase but retains a certain nostalgia: he runs a blog at osr55.wordpress.com (there’s also a YouTube channel at youtube.com/user/osr555, where he uploads videos on a regular basis), the ‘55’ standing, symbolically, for 1955, the year of EOKA. And the ‘osr’? That stands for ‘Only Solution, Revolution’.

It’s easy to scoff at such fiery posturing – but Michalis is one step ahead of the scoffers. “That’s automatism,” he points out when he talks of anarchist communities in Catalonia in 1936 and I wonder (as most people would) if that can really work in the long term. “What you just did there is an automatic response, which we’ve been taught by our family, the schools, the media of mass deception. An automatic response. Automatically, as soon as you hear something like that, you’re like ‘Oh, but human nature…’ and crap like that”. Anarchism can work, he believes, citing not just Catalans but Native American tribes – anarchism in the strict sense of living without a central authority. One of his dreams, which he and his wife are slowly putting into practice, is to build a house that’s entirely “autonomous”, with its own solar power,generators and a plot of land to grow vegetables and raise chickens; “So I won’t need anyone, neither governments nor corporations”.

But the real reason why it’s hard to scoff at Michalis’ revolutionary talk is because he’s not spouting these ideals from the comfort of a desk job or trust fund: he’s in the trenches, fighting the system – so he says – every day and twice on the weekend. He mentions lots of cases in the course of our 90 minutes, most of them punctuated with indignant cries of “they’re crazy, re koumbare!”. The case of the Iranian migrant who spent 55 months in jail while his case was pending. The case of Senthil Thevathas, a former Tamil rebel deported back to Sri Lanka (where he’s now hiding out, trying to avoid execution) – even though the Supreme Court specifically ordered that Thevathas shouldn’t be deported till his case had been examined, an order that was simply ignored by the Department of Migration. The case of a Syrian mother and her 12-year-old child, who only wanted to go to Sweden – and tried to leave Cyprus with a fake passport, which admittedly was wrong, but Migration’s response was to arrest her, leave the child to fend for itself, and order her deported back to war-torn Syria!

immigrants in nicosia

Migration is clearly his nemesis; the Department, says Michalis scathingly, “operates like a common racist”. Most of what he says about department head Anny Shakalli is unfortunately libellous, though he doesn’t care: “Let her sue me, no problem” (he’s already been hauled before disciplinary boards twice, and won his case on both occasions). The stories he tells offer few fist-pumping triumphs; mostly they involve applications for habeas corpus being dismissed, judges being apathetic (or worse), Michalis ranting and raving at heartless officials – all while migrants rot in jail and weep copiously. “Why are you treating us this way?” he recalls the Syrian woman asking, and shakes his head: “I was ashamed. I was ashamed of my country.”

But after all, I venture, there’s a crisis now. We don’t have room for migrants.

“That’s ridiculous!” he snaps back. “First of all, there’s a war in Syria. You think they know Cyprus, and they’re coming here for the halloumi? Most Syrians – maybe 99.9 per cent – want to go to Sweden or Germany. They don’t want to stay in this stinking place!”.

What’s his opinion of Cypriots generally?

“They’re skatopsyshi,” he replies vehemently, meaning they have ‘shit for souls’. “We’re among the most skatopsyshi nations. This society is rotten to the core, there’s no sense of solidarity – you can see that by how they treat the weakest. This society, when they see a weak person lying on the ground, they’ll go and kick them when they’re down. That’s all I have to say”.

The phone rings again. It’s one of his current cases (he has about 80 ongoing cases, which explains why he’s usually in the office from early morning) – an EU citizen married to an Asian man. They have a three-year-old child, with a legally-issued birth certificate naming the man as the father – but the authorities now claim it’s a marriage of convenience, and when the woman went to find out why she wasn’t allowed to work “our friends the stinking cops, the dirtbags, arrested her right in front of her child. Even though you aren’t allowed to jail a mother even for a criminal offence, only for drugs. And she’s a European citizen!” The woman’s been in jail since August 6 (it’s now September 20) – and indeed they’d been planning to deport her that same day, leaving the child behind. “They’re such liars, re koumbare, they’re such liars. I mean, they claim the man isn’t the father – so what, you’re going to leave the child with a stranger?” Michalis intervened, and blocked the deportation – but this morning, right before our interview, had an application for an interim order dismissed by a judge.

“Yes, hi,” he says on the phone now. His English isn’t perfect, and the woman is clearly distraught. “I’m – yes, Michalis, your lawyer, yes…”

A long pause. He listens.

“Listen, listen to me,” he says at last. “Today the judge, unfortunately, they reject the application. We have to make another application. But this will take at least one month…”

Another long pause.

“Listen to me, listen to me, listen to me. I understand. Don’t – listen – when they call you, don’t talk with these people. Don’t talk to them. Tell them ‘call my lawyer’. You understand what I’m telling you?”

Another pause. He raises his voice, as if to drown out her wailing.

“Don’t talk – listen – listen to me very carefully, what I’m gonna tell you. When these people call you, and they say that is from the Immigration, tell them ‘I have a lawyer. Don’t talk with me, talk to my lawyer’. And turn off the telephone. OK? I will make another application on Monday, and we will see what happens…”

He goes on for a few more minutes, ending with a promise to visit her later today at the detention centre where she’s being held “in the middle of nowhere”. It must take its toll, dealing with such cases day after day, trying to calm the distraught and desperate – but Michalis Paraskevas wouldn’t be half as impressive if he were simply doing good work, or even if his anger were a bitter, unhappy kind of anger. What’s great, and invigorating, is the way his anger is creative. It nurtures and sustains him, and goes hand-in-hand – despite everything – with dreams of a better future.

“I have no delusions on what I can offer,” he admits. “Anyone who thinks world revolution is going to start from Cyprus is out of his mind”. But he is nonetheless an anarchist – or a “libertarian socialist,” as he likes to call it – trying to be what 19th-century writer Peter Kropotkin called a “revolutionary spirit” (Kropotkin is one of his influences, along with Bakunin, Malateste and Berkman; he found their texts online, the internet being the new revolutionary frontier). “Nothing is ever lost,” he asserts. “Every struggle leaves something behind”. Even when it feels like he’s banging his head against a brick wall, he can make a tiny difference, or inspire some younger person. “Another world is possible,” he says. “It doesn’t mean it’s coming tomorrow, nor the day after. Maybe I won’t even be alive.” But the hope – the conviction – is there.

Michalis is an athlete. That’s important to note: he’s been cycling all his life, was a Cyprus champion in his teens, won the silver for the whole of Northern Greece during his college years. He talks like an athlete, as when speaking of a televised debate he had with MP Zacharias Koulias: “I demolished him in five minutes!” he says gleefully. “With arguments,” he adds, as if he and Koulias might’ve arm-wrestled instead, or raced their bikes. When he thinks about his life – his work, his beliefs, the seemingly inviolable System – I suspect he thinks like an athlete: it’s all about stamina and determination, and refusing to give up till you’ve wheeled across the finish line.

“Everyone makes their choices in this life,” says Michalis firmly. He cites Pavlos Fyssas, the Greek leftist killed by Golden Dawn supporters in Greece recently; not that he himself wants to die, he adds quickly, but that’s what you do, “you do what you believe in and hope for the best… Today we’re alive, tomorrow we’re not. It goes without saying that I have plans for the future, I want to start a family – but everyone makes their choices. If you want to be a slave, and a worm, and to crawl, then go ahead and do it, my friend – but I don’t accept that. OK? I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, and let them do what they want to me.”

Some may despise him, and that’s okay too: “You see how I am as a person: you either like me or you don’t like me!” But the point is revolution, and “revolution begins in the mind,” he says earnestly. “I chose to be in society. I’m in the system – I’m a lawyer, obviously – and I’m fighting within this system.

“You know what the easiest thing in the world is, Theo? To wear torn clothes, and grow my hair Rasta-style, and go get my fix” – he makes the universal gesture for puffing on a joint – and say ‘I’m an anarchist’. No, my friend, that’s not being an anarchist. An anarchist is a fighting man, who’s fighting for a better society”. Like I said, impressive.