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Tue, 25 Apr 2006

Bicommunal Protest for a mixed village; a first?

I saw this interesting report in Yeniduzen newspaper which reports that Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot villagers of Polemitya (Polemidhia) are planning a bicommunal protest against the planned acquisition of their lands by the Republic of Cyprus to build a new university campus. The lands were taken away by the British for a military camp (see for example an article by Ulus Irkad and dossier on CNN Turk about its role in training Cypriots for WWII) with long term leases but have now been emptied by the British and they had announced their plans to return the land to the original owners. Now, the T/C's and G/C's from Polemitya are planning a demonstration to demand their lands rather than letting them go for the university campus. I find this an interesting attempt, perhaps a first in recent decades, that T/Cs and G/Cs are jointly standing up for their rights on lands they have left long time ago. Hopefully we will see more of that. (Disclaimer: I do not know much about this event, unfortunately, it has been reported on very few online papers.)

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