Our adventures in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus continue....

Interesting article in The Cyprus Mail, which is of course a Southern newspaper.

OUR VIEW. ORAMS RULING MUST BE KEPT IN PROSPECTIVE.

Published in Cyprus Mail, Tuesday January 26th 2010.

A FEW DAYS ago, we wrote that Greek Cypriots should not get carried away by the Orams judgment and lose sight of the need for a political settlement. The Oramses may have been punished by the courts for building a villa on the land of Greek Cypriot refugee Meletis Apostolides, but the owner is no closer to having his land returned to him as a result of the judgment. Yet we are already hearing of plans for more legal action. Apostolides’ lawyer Constantis Candounas has announced that he has instructions, from the owners of the Dome Hotel in Kyrenia, to take legal action against 60 tourists who had stayed there in 2009. The lawyer said he had the names and addresses of the tourists, who would be accused of trespassing, and the means of serving them with a court summons, in whichever EU country they were residing.

There is a danger of this process degenerating into a joke. If a tourist does not appear in the Cyprus court and he is found guilty he would be fined a few hundred euro, for trespassing for a week. Would we then appeal to the guilty party’s country of residence, to execute a court decision involving a few hundred euro? We would become the laughing stock of the EU, if we started bomba

rding the courts of member-states with requests for the execution of such court orders, making a mockery of the EU law. The cost of executing the court order would be 10 to 20 times higher than the actual fine.

There is a possibility that the Cyprus courts would throw out a case of trespassing against a foreign tourist, but if it does not we may witness hundreds of trespass cases being brought to justice. Considering more than a thousand recourses were filed at the European Court of Human Rights after the referendum, the Cyprus courts, to which people have much easier access, could be looking at tens of thousands cases against suspected trespassers. Perhaps, legal action would be taken against Greek Cypriots that stayed at a hotel in the north as well.

The question is, would the court decisions facilitate the return of properties to their owners? We think everyone knows the answer, after our experience with the ECHR, which encouraged the setting up of the property commission in the north in order not to have to deal with the recourses by Greek Cypriot refugees. This is why we need to put the Orams judgment in perspective.
True, it was a legal and moral victory for the Greek Cypriot side but it has not done away with the need for a negotiated settlement. A lawyer hit the nail on the head a couple of days ago when he said, “if you think that the (Orams) decision would rid us of the Turkish troops you are making a big mistake”.

From this article one question springs to mind. Who is SELLING lists of peoples names and addresses to lawyers in the south? How do they actually find the names and addresses of all these people, especially those who are now going to be charged with trespass. The whole is now stooping to the ludicrous and all to feed the propaganda machine that tries to convince the world that the Greek Cypriots are the innocent party, whilst all they really want is control of the whole island and nothing less. History did not start here in 1974. Turkey did not invade, they intervened to protect their people who were being subjected to the worst forms of genocide and as usual of course Britain sat on it's arse and didn't intervene when it should have done, probably because George Bush wasn't around to ask it to get involved. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the British bases here. could it ?????

Many Turkish Cypriots here say they do not want to go back to Paphos and other places because they have made a new life here since 1974 and I feel sure that there are many Greek Cypriots who feel the same, but politicians prevent a solution for their own ends. Rightly the land and property owners feel they want at least compensation for their losses, but nobody says anything about all the land and property owned by Turkish Cypriots in the South. This includes both airports, built on Turkish Cypriot owned land, I believe.