CYPRUS: Government accused of coercing Syrians into ‘voluntary’ returns ― Trial of prominent human rights defender postponed for fourth time ― Hundreds of Syrians reportedly withdrawing asylum applications ― Call for end to freeze on Syrians’ asylum ap…

• The government has been accused of coercing Syrians into “voluntary” returns.
• The trial of a prominent human rights defender who has been accused of assaulting a guard in a reception centre has been postponed for the fourth time.
• Hundreds of Syrians have reportedly withdrawn their applications for asylum in Cyprus in recent months.
• A campaigning group has called for the “partial lifting” of a suspension on asylum applications from Syrians.

The Cypriot government has been accused of coercing Syrian refugees into “voluntary” returns. According to a joint investigation by the NGO Statewatch and the New Arab and UntoldMag news agencies, the Ministry of the Interior has been “using coercion and deceit to pressure individuals into voluntary returns, at the expense of the country’s obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights”. The investigation into Cyprus’ Assisted Voluntary Return programme, which is “financially and operationally” supported by the EU to enable people who wish to return to their home countries in an “organised, safe and dignified manner”, found that the participation of a number of Syrians in it had not been based on their free and informed choices. The authors reported that the Syrians had faced denial of access to asylum, unfounded accusations of serious crime, and unlawful detention in conditions “contrary to European values and international human rights law”, and that they had been pressured to sign voluntary return agreements “under the threat of forced deportation”.

The trial of a prominent human rights defender who has been accused of assaulting a guard in a reception centre has been postponed for the fourth time. The co-founder and head of the NGO Action for Equality, Support and Anti-Racism (KISA), Doros Polykarpou, is facing charges of trespassing, disturbing the peace and insulting and assaulting two guards at the Pournara reception centre during a visit in March 2022. According to Polykarpou and Brigitte Espuche from the Migreurop network, who accompanied him to the centre, Polykarpou was himself the victim of a violent verbal and physical attack by one of the guards. When Polykarpou tried to file a complaint against the guard at a nearby police post, he was made to wait while the police allowed the two guards to file their complaints first. On 11 February 2025, a hearing on the case was postponed until 15 September, due to the prosecution’s failure to provide the defence with a piece of evidence. This was the fourth postponement since Polykarpou was notified of the indictment in August 2022 and summoned to appear before the Nicosia District Court in December of that year. The human rights NGO Front Line Defenders has expressed its “deep concerns” about the repeated postponement of the trial, arguing that it constitutes “a form of judicial harassment aimed at preventing and hindering the human rights defender from continuing his legitimate work as a human rights defender without fear, intimidation and interruption”. In a joint letter to Attorney General Georgios L. Savvides, Front Line Defenders expressed its belief that the charges against Polykarpou were “linked to his human rights work helping migrants, refugees and victims of trafficking” and it urged Savvides to drop the case. Migreurop also criticised the trial as the latest stage in an ongoing campaign against KISA. “This trial comes against a backdrop of increasing intimidation, accusations, harassment and repeated attacks – including bombings – against KISA and its members over many years,” it wrote in a statement.

Hundreds of Syrians have reportedly withdrawn their applications for asylum in Cyprus in recent months. According to Deputy Minister of Migration and International Protection Nikolas Ioannides, an average of 40 asylum requests from Syrians had been withdrawn every day since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. Ioannides added that, between 9 December 2024 and 31 January 2025, 755 Syrians had left the country while 1,367 others had expressed an intention to return to Syria, of whom 944 had withdrawn their applications, and 423 others had waived their protection status.

A campaigning group has called for the “partial lifting” of a suspension on asylum applications from Syrians. On 17 February, the Syrians in Cyprus group wrote to Deputy Minister of Migration and International Protection Nikolas Ioannides to argue that the freeze, which has been in place since April 2024, was no longer justifiable given the changes in the number of Syrians arriving in and leaving Cyprus. The group also decried the length of time that some Syrians have been waiting for their applications to be processed compared to applicants from other countries. “This is particularly concerning given that some Syrian asylum seekers have been waiting since 2019, while the processing time for new asylum applications from other nationalities has been reduced to just three months,” they wrote. They also called on the government to consider the possibility of granting third-country worker status for some Syrians in Cyprus without them having to leave the country first.

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