From Kilbirnie to a shack in Cyprus

Press, 22 May 1978, Page 14

From Kilbirnie to a shack in Cyprus

NZPA staff correspondent Nicosia. Just a few weeks ago, a Creek Cypriot, Andrew Zandi, lived in Kilbirnie and worked for the Wellington City Corporation. Today, his home is a shack in which he cooks in the same water he uses for washing. Conditions which would not be tolerated in Wellington are almost luxuries in Mr Zandi’s new address, Kolossi Refugee Camp, Cyprus. The camp, on the idyllic but tragic island’s south coast, is one of many that have appeared in the four years since Turkish troops Occupied 40 per cent of Cyprus.

Mr Zandi, who is now 32, emigrated to New Zealand from the Cypriot port of Famagusta in 1967. He left behind his mother and father, sister and brother-in-law. When the Greek-in-spired and ultimately abortive coup temporarily sent the late President, Archbishop Makarios, to London in 1974, the Turks took the opportunity to invade, and one of the areas they took over, and still control, was Famagusta. Mr Zandi in Wellington had no inkling of what had happened to his family. In early 1975, more than six months after what Greek Cypriots now refer to as “The war”, he received a telegram from the international Red Cross, telling him, in a permitted maximum of 20 words, that his family was safe and still in the Tur-kish-controlled area.

A few months went by and he received another Red Cross telegram, telling him that his family had joined the 180,000 refugees who had moved or been forced into Southern Cyprus, away from the Turks. Mr Zandi then resolved to return to Cyprus to do

what he could for his family. He arrived three weeks ago and intends to stay four or five months, but maybe longer. He learned from his family some horrific tales of Turkish rule in Famagusta, stories which Turks on the other side of the line that divides Cyprus match about Greeks and Creek Cypriots. “My father had a farm outside Famagusta," Mr suppled by the United out. The turks then dehim alone for a while but then they took away his farm vehicles and implements and he could not farm. “He had a lot of money in a bank in Famagusta but he could not get it out. The Turks then decided that because my family are Greek Cypriots, they could not live in the Turkish part of the island and should go to the areas controlled by the Cyprus Government. “They were given no choice. The Turks beat up my brother-in-law so badly that he cannot work an}' more. He is only 25. They raped women and committed insulting and degrading acts against the men. My family lost everything they had and came here just in the clothes they had on.” Mr Zandi’s father is nearing 80, but looks more, and still wears the traditional high boots and baggy trousers of a Greek peasant. His mother is crippled with arthritis: she bathes her painful ankles in water that two hours previously had been used for cooking the tea.

Home for the Zandi family including the crippled brother in-law, is a one-room shack, built by the United Next door, a tent (also supplied by the United Nations High’ Commission for Refugees) serves as

bathroom. kitchen and communal livingroom. The Zandi family's story can be echoed around the island, on both sides of the line which separates Greek from Turk. Official United Nations figures say that 180.000 Greek Cypriots were displaced by the events of 1974, and 40,000 Turkish Cypriots fled from south to north. The Linked Nations Commission has spent SIBOM on refugee housing in the last four years, and estimates it has another two years work to do, provided nothing upsets the uneasy peace between the two sides. The tents at the Kolossi camp where the Zandi family lives are the last refugee tents on the is land, the United Nations says. They too will gradually be replaced by the temporary wooden shelters.