DAILY LIFE IN CYPRUS

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28133, 23 November 1956, Page 13

DAILY LIFE IN CYPRUS

Patrols,. Searches, Restrictions (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) <Rec.Bp.m.) LONDON, Nov. 22. Problems of the island of Cyprus, !t e ™ a S& uar t£ rs of Allied forces in Middle East, have been overshadowed in recent weeks by developments at Suez. They have been brought again into the limelight by the intensification of terrorism and the imposition of further punitive measures by the civil administration. .. F . ar more British people have lost their lives in Cyprus than in the Canal Zone turmoil and no-one doubts that more killings will take place. There have been more than 200 deaths since the Cyprus emergency began in April, 1955. including more than 80 Britons. Sixteen of them died this month. Every soldier on the island carries arms, armed escorts accompany every military vehicle, every public vehicle has its windows screened by anti-bomb wire, and children go to school under armed guards and run about playgrounds under shelter of tommy guns. There are road blocks and searches of people and vehicles at frequent intervals, and lives are complicated by the mechanics of security work, guards, patrols, cordons, search parties, and restrictions.

A strange thing to find about this island is that the killings are now being taken for granted. Death has become an “incident.” The real reason for this situation in Cyprus, the Enosis campaign, is rarely mentioned nowadays and if you ask the average British Tommy —and he is probably a National Reservist who has been facing bombs and boredom for the last year—what he is doing there, he just shrugs. It is obvious, however, that he is becoming more and more angry at what seems to be the senseless killing of his mates, and at the possibility that something similar may happen to him.

Most of the island is under curfew which confines all persons under 26 to their homes in the evening and at week-ends, and many towns and villages are suffering under fines — one as high as £35,000. imposed because of renewed acts of EOKA violence.

These measures may be limiting terrorist influence, but under the hardships they create, people of Cyprus seem to be growing even more antipathetic to the British case, and more unhelpful in contributing to the suppression of EOKA.