RIOTING IN CYPRUS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17606, 23 October 1931, Page 5

RIOTING IN CYPRUS

RADIO CALL FOR HELP GOVERNMENT HOUSE BURNED POLICE; FIRE; ON NATIVES (Etcc. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Received Oct. 23, 11 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 22. The Governor of Cyprus sent a wireloss message to the Admiralty for naval assistance to quell grave Nationalist riots, which are presumably the outcome of the Nationalists’ agitation for union between Cyprus and Greece. A Cairo message says that Egypt has Seen requested to send military help to Cyprus. Tlie Central News says rioters at Larnaca destroyed Government House by setting it on fire. The occupants were not injured. The police were forced to fire a volley, which wounded 11 natives.

An island situated in the north-east of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, Cyprus is 35 miles from the mainland. It is about 140 miles long and 60 miles wide, its total area of 3584 square miles making it the largest island in the Mediterranean. Its population at the census of 1921 was 310,715. From its earliest history, centuries before Christ, the island was the scene of many battles and its ownership changed many times. In 58 B.C. it became a Roman province, and remained so for 700 years, but it then fell to the Saracens at different intervals until in 1195 Richard I, on his way to the Crusades, took the island and sold it to the King of Jerusalem, who retained it until 1487, when it passed to the republic of Venice. In 1570 the Turks invaded Cyprus and after long seiges and terrible massacres took possession of the country and ruled it for 300 years. On July 10, 1878, the island was formally occupied by the British, by whom it has Since been held. There was an earlier movement sponsored by the islanders and the Greeks for the island to be ceded to Greece, hut this effort was abandoned when, on the outbreak of the Great War, Britain definitely annexed the island, this annexation beingi confirmed on the conclusion of peace.