www.talkcyprus.org

[cannedmoose]

I'm going to be cheeky here and borrow a discussion from the 'other place' as it's always been a question I've wanted to ask but known what response I'd get from Piratis et. al. Credit to 'Sid' for the question.

Quote: Why are the children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren and so on of the refugees considered refugees? I think that real refugees are those who had to pass through all these miserable and tragic events of invasion and were pushed away from their homeland and cannot come back there. So, then are the refugees’ children and the grandchildren who were born on the Government controlled areas and were not really pushed away from their homeland fairly called refugees? Isn’t their homeland there where they were born?

I read an article where it was said that in some years (I do not remember how many years exactly) the refugees will make up more than 80% of the population. Isn’t it worrying? In some years Cyprus will become an island of refugees!

I heard that some of so-called refugees own hotels and lead a far from bad life on the free territories. Don’t you think that some of them just use their status to get financial assistance from the government?

The response that this person received was as follows:

Quote: These children grandchildren etc are refugees because their homeland, the land their ancestors have lived for 3500 years, is forcefully denied to them because of their race. If they try to retun there they will face the exact same cruelty the Turks exibited when they forcefully removed 200.000 people from their homes in order to perform ethnic cleaning in 1/3rd of Cyprus. What you heard is about a tiny minority of refugees. The great majority of them live in refugee housing or in conditions much worst from those they would have enjoyed if their properties were not stolen from them.

From my perspective, I know a few people that were both refugees and the children of refugees (and thus defined as refugees themselves). From my perspective they don't live in bad conditions and seem to have done extremely well for themselves in spite of losing everything in 1974. Having seen genuine refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, I can safely say that the refugees in Cyprus are better classed as 'displaced persons', rather than refugees. I'd also therefore question the government policy of assistance to the generations who are considered refugees but never went through the traumatic period from 1974 until the late 1970s. Can anyone shed any light on this or give their perspective. I know it's a touchy issue, but it's one I've wondered about for some time.

[Crash Test Dummy]

i dont concider myself a refugee. the members of my family who were forced out of their house at gun-point are refugees. many people no have made their new countries of residence their home. my grandparents had their own shop and owned their house. you dont go back after 30 years especially when your family was borned and raised away from cyprus.

[MicAtCyp]

I dont think the article is correct. The one who have a "regugee ID" are the refugees themselves nd their children.Not their grand children unless both parents are refugees.
For example my wife has a refugee id, but not my children, because I am not a refugee.

[Bananiot]

It works the other way round too. I am a refugee but I do not have a refugee id ...

[Dhavlos]

Both my grandparents moved away well before the troubles...my grand father in the 1940's! Our village is 'occupied' and although we are not considered refugees, we have land that it in our name/deeds and we have a connection to that land, the stories our parents tell etc...

It would eb wrong to say we are refugees, but we still officially own land there.

I may only be 17, and have never visited the village, but i still feel part of it, as if it it the family home i havent seen. I know it sounds wierd, and hardly justified, seeing i havent even seen it, but 'emotion' can be a wierd thing.

but i would never call myself or my family refugees, more, 'people who cant go back to their ancestral home' ... if you see what i mean.

Refugees, in my eyes are only those who had to move during the 60's and 74. however, i think that you have to take into account their families when talking about numbers of people who may wish to return...which comlicates things further.

[MicAtCyp]

wrote: Having seen genuine refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, I can safely say that
the refugees in Cyprus are better classed as 'displaced persons', rather than refugees.

I don't agree. A refugee is one who finds refuse somewhere else out of his home. The fact that a refugee manages to settle somewhere else and perhaps prosper is irrelevant. One who was once refugee and is still alive is still a refugee.
Perhaps you should change your definition to "forcibly displaced persons whose properties and ancestral lands were deprived and grabbed by others" Technically a child of both such persons still has the same rights as his parents under inheritance.

To understand the error in your definition, you may consider that it can apply to the Jews who are now abandoning the gaza strip.

[cannedmoose]

True, I can appreciate that those who directly experienced forced removal from their homes are refugees and will remain so until they are allowed the legal right of return. HOWEVER, I don't see this generational aspect to it. Many of the children of refugees have been born since the late 1970s and have no knowledge or experience of having lived in the north, or memories of being removed from them. Yes, they learn through their parents memories and stories of the past, but they cannot appreciate what the actual process was like and have mostly not suffered the deprivations that their parents suffered. I find it hard therefore to distinguish between these 'refugees' of the post-1974 generation and others of that generation who were not from such families. Post-1974, it wasn't just the refugees whose way of life was fundamentally altered, it was every single Cypriot present and alive at the time that went through this process.

[Saint Jimmy]

I am the child of a refugee father. I don't consider myself as a refugee, for the reasons cannedmoose listed above. I have no bond with the property, the land or the symbolisms they stand for that my father told me of, besides their monetary value (I know how that must sound to some, but I consider honesty as the noblest of virtues).
However, I can certainly understand one who does (if they sincerely have it and it doesn't happen to be one of those symptoms of fake redneck god-fearin' country-lovin'), and I will refrain from expressing my view on whether we ('we' meaning 'people who have not directly experienced the aftermath of '74) should be labelled 'refugees' until someone explains to me what the implication is.

My question is this: what does it mean to NOT label us refugees and why would anyone advocate the abolition of the term? Does it mean that we are not entitled to the actual property that our (grand)parents own, and we should, thus, settle for compensation? Obviously, more is at stake here than the political correctness (the technicality of the matter) of who should be called what, and I'm asking what that is. Because if it's just about using the right descriptive term, then I can accept the argument. If it's about "this guy is not a refugee, he hasn't lived through refugee stuff, so he can't have the house. He'll receive compensation equal to the house's value", then I would call the argument weak.

[MicAtCyp]

So Jimmy you dont consider yourself a refugee.
OK then.Do you consider you have rights derived from your parents being refugees that you are deprived yes or no?
My next question are you willing to throw away those rights you were deprived.

To draw an analogy consider the case of a child born and raised in prison.That child propably thinks there is nothing s/he is deprived of.Even if let free it will return to prison.

[Dhavlos]

whether a person is a refugee or not, all people should be able to live in any part of cyprus they want...this is what the long term implications of a soltuion should entail.

Refugees are only part of a soltuion, and only in the short term...what needs to be established long before their interests is what cyprus will be like in say, 20/30yrs after a solution. What are the longterm implications of the spoltuion....it may work for 5/10years...but what after that??

[Saint Jimmy]

MicAtCyp wrote: Do you consider you have rights derived from your parents being refugees that you are deprived yes or no?
Yes, but no specific desire to enjoy them.
MicAtCyp wrote: My next question are you willing to throw away those rights you were deprived.
No. That's what I'm saying. Because I have no specific desire to enjoy those specific rights, I'm willing to put a price tag on them.
MicAtCyp wrote: To draw an analogy consider the case of a child born and raised in prison.That child propably thinks there is nothing s/he is deprived of.Even if let free it will return to prison.
...where it will be happiest. But I agree with what you're implying, i.e. that refugee 'classification' definitely does not justify a 'ranking' of people's rights according to 'refugee-ness'.

[city]

I believe only the people that have really gone through it all should be called refugees. That has nothing to do with their rights, those will/should of cause be bequeathed (?) to the next generations.

Is it true that these next generations still get financial support from the government? I understood this is connected to the mentioned refugee ID which obviously only goes as far as children of refugees are concerned. The generation after that will not have this ID. Correct?

[gabs]

Giorgio

Quote: the members of my family who were forced out of their house at gun-point are refugees.

i am sorry to have read this. I was in london in 74 and know little about the invasion. I have always thought that the TA took over mainly evacuated or empty Greek Cypriot townships, obviously i am wrong.

two questions

first one - did your family not know the TA were coming, and if so why did they not leave earlier - (i think its an obvious answer but still).

second - what percentage of Greek Cypriot's were force to leave at gunpoint, or how many left prior to TA coming to their towns?.

my Greek Cypriot friends in london tell me that their families all left as soon as the ta landed, in the belief that it would aLl be over in a few weeks and they would soon be returning to their homes.

i ask out of respect and with sympathy. i ask because i dont know the answers and would like to understand more about the plight of Greek Cypriot refugees

[larissa]

i'm doing a research paper on this idea of children of refugees identifying themselves as 'refugees'.
a book called 'the making of refugees' address this exact issue in greek-cypriots, and it has alot to say for the descendants of refugees adopting the identity of their parents, etc.
the results of the study actually showed that a large proportion of descendants do actually see themselves as refugees.

does anyone agree?

[Gardash]

I'm back! I missed y'all!

OK, this is a topic I can identify. I would say the children of refugees (eg me) are refugees for a couploe of reasons. Many refugees managed to fix themselves up, many didnt. The myth says we all got lots of money. My family for example got nothing, until I got my flat last year where I claimed approx. 3,500 CYP. The government took 6,500 in taxes at the same time, but thats a different story. My main point is that in cy, parents for better or worse help out their kids with a lot- uni education, housing, cars even etc. Where the parents are disenfranchised it has knock on effects to later generations. An uncle of mine (in the Cy sence- my mother's cousin) would have been very wealthy as Famagusta has post 74 sprawled over his farm. However he is hitting 70 and driving a tourist bus as long as he can on his soon-to-expire professional licence to cover debts for property etc, things he had covered pre-invasion. Of course his kids have knock on consequences.
The other thing is community. We are citizens of Famagusta, and this is not the result of some brainwashing. I am also an S-town kid, but I am still a Varoshiotis. The reason is because we werent spread out. I grew up around other Famagusta kids, as their parents remained friends with mine. I sailed at the Famagusta Nautical Club. If I gave a crap about football I'd follow both Anorthosis and AEL. I buy cakes from a Famagusta baker and I used to get my moped fixed by a FAmagusta mechanic. Not out of loyalty, but seeing as my Mother was a customer there, and he reopened here, through momentum. The same goes for the florist.
This became clear when I visited Varosi after the green line opened. At three points I can rattle off family homes of people I know, and we cant even get to our house as it's fenced off. After being born and raised in Limassol, I cant do it anywhere here. The community is stil approximately intact.
One last thing- there seems to be a term of 'abandoned' houses, implying the owners somehow relinquished the will to go back. Famagusta got evacuated because the Turkish air force decided to bomb it. The residents thought they would be back after the weekend, and took nothing. My Mother had all the time in the world and she went in her jeans with a spare bathing suit, and even the parrot got left in the cage as they thought they'd be back within 3 days.