Cyprus Mail: News Articles in English, 99-09-29

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From: The Cyprus Mail at <http://www.cynews.com/>

Wednesday, September 29, 1999

CONTENTS

[01] Settlers held after ex-diplomat’s wife rapedTWO TURKISH settlers have been arrested in the north for the alleged gang rape of a former British diplomat's wife on Sunday.The French news agency AFP reported yesterday that Ozgul Sertbirinci, 23, and Feysullah Culfuk, 20, were arrested on Monday after a manhunt. They have allegedly confessed to the rape.The two men are accused of forcibly entering the home of the unnamed former diplomat and sodomising his wife several times after tying the couple up.They later set the house on fire and cut all the telephone lines before fleeing.The couple were only saved from death by their neighbours, who alerted the fire brigade.Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash yesterday expressed regret over the incident. "This is a savage crime. The suspects should be tried as soon as possible for us to clean up this stain," he said.

[02] Relations between Exchange and brokers hit new low

[03] US feels time is ripe for a Cyprus solution

[04] Cabaret girls fear for their lives after reporting employer

[05] Ministers extend freeze on foreign workers

[06] Aeroporos trial adjourned pending new appeal

[07] Lordos Hotels insider trading probe

[08] Monks insist their undecayed abbot is a saint

[09] Salamis: the human side of a historic excavation

[01] Settlers held after ex-diplomat’s wife rapedTWO TURKISH settlers have been arrested in the north for the alleged gang rape of a former British diplomat's wife on Sunday.The French news agency AFP reported yesterday that Ozgul Sertbirinci, 23, and Feysullah Culfuk, 20, were arrested on Monday after a manhunt. They have allegedly confessed to the rape.The two men are accused of forcibly entering the home of the unnamed former diplomat and sodomising his wife several times after tying the couple up.They later set the house on fire and cut all the telephone lines before fleeing.The couple were only saved from death by their neighbours, who alerted the fire brigade.Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash yesterday expressed regret over the incident. "This is a savage crime. The suspects should be tried as soon as possible for us to clean up this stain," he said.

Wednesday, September 29, 1999

[02] Relations between Exchange and brokers hit new low

BROKERS were up in arms yesterday against a decision by the Cyprus Stock Exchange to fine them for delays in processing transactions during the boom months of the summer.

One broker, Christodoulos Ellinas of Share Link Securities, said the brokers would take the exchange to court over the issue, and described the bourse's decision to fine them as vindictive.

Other brokers, however, said Ellinas' threat to take the exchange to court may not reflect the intention of all brokers.

His warning, however, plunged relations between the island's 50-plus brokers and the exchange to a new low, only days before the market was scheduled to reopen on Monday after a four-week closure.

The closure, the third since late July, was agreed by the exchange to allow brokerages to deal with thousands of unprocessed transactions. Brokers have said the backlog was threatening to cause the market's collapse.

Dinos Papadopoulos, the exchange's chairman, was quoted as saying yesterday that he could not rule out the market not reopening on October 4 as scheduled.

The government says that reopening the market on October 4 is imperative.

The exchange said after a meeting on Monday night that it would fine brokers for delayed paperwork retroactively from September 20. Money owed to the exchange in such fines currently stands at £2.5 million, according to one estimate.

The brokers, who have been accused by small investors in recent weeks of being arrogant and inaccessible, say they cannot be held solely responsible for the backlog and accuse the exchange of exaggerating the size of the problem.

The backlog was created in part by the introduction of a fully-automated trading system in May and the arrival of thousands of new investors seeking to make a quick profit in a bullish market. The market's gains on the year stand at a staggering 360 per cent, placing it among the world's best performing bourses this year.

"The stock exchange's great tolerance was eclipsed by the brokers, who refuse to observe the law," said Nicholas Karydas, a member of the exchange's council. "Imposing the fines was the least we could have done in response to the brokers not honouring their end of the deal," he said.

The exchange's tough stand on the delays was swiftly welcomed by the association of stock exchange investors. They also gave a warm reception to the exchange's proposal for investors to do away with brokers' services and trade among themselves. The proposal, which the exchange inconclusively discussed on Monday night, already enjoys the support of several House deputies.

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Wednesday, September 29, 1999

[03] US feels time is ripe for a Cyprus solution

U.S. OFFICIALS yesterday underlined Washington's commitment to swift progress on a Cyprus solution ahead of a key meeting later in the day between President Bill Clinton and Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit.

US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs Marc Grossman said: "The President of the US is going to say to Mr Ecevit exactly what he has said in public and to many people in this country, that Cyprus is a very important problem, that the conditions for it being worked on now and, we hope, solved, are as good as they have been for a very long time and that we ought to make progress quickly."

The meeting between Clinton and Ecevit is expected to be instrumental in deciding whether UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan issues invitations for talks between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot sides.

Grossman repeated Washington's support for the initiative of the G8 in June, calling for a return to talks without preconditions.

"This is the policy that we have been pursuing, that's the policy we have pursued at the (UN) General Assembly, and I'm sure it will be our policy for some time to come," he said.

The Turkish side has been refusing to return to talks unless the breakaway regime of Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash is accorded recognition as a state.

Commenting on the Turkish stance, Grossman said: "One of the things I think has been missing on the Turkish side is the recognition that the G8 talked about negotiations without preconditions. I think this is a very important thing."

Grossman said all those who had worked on the G8 statement believed it to be "absolutely reasonable".

"We would like the negotiations to begin as soon as possible," Grossman said.

According to yesterday's Turkish Cypriot press, Denktash said the aim of Ecevit's visit to the US was not to reach a decision on the Cyprus problem.

"It is very detrimental and wrong to create such an atmosphere as if the Cyprus issue was a milestone in Turkish-American relations," Denktash said. "Relations between the US and Turkey and the interests of the US are very different things."

He said he expected Ecevit would explain to Clinton Turkey's policy on the Cyprus issue.

Commenting on the talks, Denktash said the Turkish Cypriots wanted a positive, balanced and lasting outcome to emerge from negotiations.

"We are not saying we will not participate in the talks, we are merely outlining what is necessary in order to participate," he said.

To attain the necessary outcome means ascertaining the conditions for sitting at the negotiating table, he said.

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem, who took a negative stance last week in his contacts with US officials, told a Turkish TV station that there was a difference of views with the US on the Cyprus issue. "In other words, the United States and Turkey do not have the same views and are not looking for the same solution to the Cyprus issue," he said. "It is completely meaningless to let the Cyprus issue adversely affect Turkish-US relations. Neither Turkey nor the US State Department will allow such a mistake to be committed. It is quite possible there will be some opposition, but this will not go far."

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Wednesday, September 29, 1999

[04] Cabaret girls fear for their lives after reporting employer

ALL SIX cabaret girls said they thought they knew what to expect when boarding their plane in Manila to come to Cyprus. But none envisioned fleeing for their lives after telling authorities their employer had refused to pay them anything at all.

Yesterday the six were forced to take sanctuary in the Nicosia offices of Yiannakis Erotocritou, immigration lawyer and Consul of the Philippines -- in fear for their lives, they said.

While the women told their tales, Erotocritou growled their stories by telephone to the Migration Department. He wanted their boss, the owner of a cabaret in Limassol, to return the women's passports and to pay all their back salaries.

Esther Beatty, president of the Philippine community in Cyprus, said their contract entitled each woman to £10 per day in base pay and a commission on all drinks they got bar customers to drink. The women said they never saw any of this.

In addition, though unofficially (as it was illegal), Beatty said each woman was to get £20 out of every £65 that customers paid the cabaret to take one of them home for sex. The women said they never saw any of this money either.

"They understood they would have to talk to the customers at the table, that they would be going out with customers, but they did not expect that they would be forced to go out with the customers if they did not want to," Beatty said.

"(But) they were forced to go out... and perform whatever the customer wants," she said, because the cabaret's manager warned "he would kill them" if they refused.

All six women confirmed they had had sex with the cabaret's customers for money, but said they did so out of fear for their lives at the hands of its owner and its manager.

They told the Cyprus Mailyesterday they now feared returning to the Limassol lodgings they rent from the cabaret's owner, lest he make good on his threat to have them killed for reporting him to the authorities.

Not only did the cabaret's owner "threaten... they would be killed" for reporting him, but -- as his wife is a Filipina -- he made the threat "in Tagalog, which is the language they speak. This is why they're afraid," Beatty added.

But the cabaret's owner "is the one who would kill them," Beatty said. "(He) is known to be violent... He did not actually harm them, but he did it to other girls, the Russians and the Romanians, just to show them that this will happen to them if they would not go out" with customers, she said.

"(He) is a crazy man. That's why we are afraid of him. He's a very violent man," Maria, 34, said. "If he wants to make violence to you, he is a very bad story."

When the six asked the owner's Filipina wife for help, "she didn't care," Beatty said. Despite being their compatriot, "she didn't do anything. She used to be a cabaret girl as well."

"They have to leave Cyprus now," Erotocritou said. "They don't want to work there, you can imagine, after they complained against their employer."

"I called (Migration Officer Christodoulos) Nicolaides, myself," Erotocritou said, to ensure the women are not summarily deported on grounds of refusing to work at the cabaret, while their plight is sorted out.

While leaving Cyprus may solve one problem, none of the six women said they were looking forward to going home, lest their families learn what they did in Cyprus. But all six said financial desperation drove them to prostitution here.

"We know the business here; none of our families knows our business here," said Maria.

"I don't like that my family will know," Virginia said. "We came here to give our families financial support. We will tell them a lie; we will not tell them the truth," she said.

Meanwhile, Erotocritou said he or another of his firm's associates would accompany the women to Limassol today to formally file their complaint there, lest they wind up arrested and deported without anything for their pains in Cyprus.

He said he was disappointed at Nicolaides for failing to keep his pledge to handle the women's complaints in Nicosia instead of forcing them to return to Limassol.

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Wednesday, September 29, 1999

[05] Ministers extend freeze on foreign workers

The three-member committee was made up of the Interior, Justice and Labour Ministers.

Speaking after the closed meeting, Interior Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou said the exact number of foreigners working illegally in Cyprus could not be calculated, and that this was due to issue remaining largely unchecked for the last 13 years.

"When I asked the Immigration Officer to give me the information, he was unable to do so. There are people who used three different names each, so the number (of illegal workers) could appear as 10,000 and be only 3,000 in reality. For example if the name was Mustafa, it would sometimes be written with a 'u' and at other times with 'ou'. So this information is not representative."

Labour Minister Andreas Moushiouttas admitted that the illegal employment of foreign workers contributed to unemployment on the island.

"The needs of the economy called for the presence of (legal) foreign workers and their presence here does not cause problems either to the economy or add to unemployment. Illegal workers, however, definitely do contribute to unemployment."

Justice Minister Nicos Koshis, meanwhile, repeated his view that work permits should be provided to specific individuals, and not to employers who then bring in different workers on the same permit at different times.

Koshis said 120 illegal workers were being deported from the island every week.

"Officially I can't say, unofficially I can say that our coast is well guarded and it has become increasing difficult for them to come in. Month by month, the illegal workers should become less and less."

The Committee also upheld its decision to lower the number of foreign waitresses allowed to work at bars, and said the government Statistics and Research Department was investigating the number of Black Sea Russians being employed in Cyprus, and under what conditions they were working.

Cabaret and bar owners, under the umbrella of shopkeepers' union Povek, last week appealed to Koshis to be more lenient over the amount of foreign women they were allowed to employ.

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Wednesday, September 29, 1999

[06] Aeroporos trial adjourned pending new appeal

Prosecutors have referred a list of six questions to the Supreme Court concerning the court's decision not to allow a prosecution witness to read out the 10 unanswered calls, which were stored in the memory of the mobile phone.

The trial was adjourned until October 29 to give the Supreme Court time to rule on the appeal.

Also yesterday, the lawyer of one of the five defendants, Sotiris Athinis, asked the court to change his client's bail conditions to allow him to leave the country until October 27 -- just two days before the trial resumes.

Backing its demand, the defence said the police had warned Athinis that his life was in danger on a daily basis.

Athinis had a narrow escape earlier this month when an anti-tank missile whizzed past him as he entered his cabaret on Limassol's Heroes Square.

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Wednesday, September 29, 1999

[07] Lordos Hotels insider trading probe

The commission's probe is based on a complaint made by Lordos himself against members of the board who are believed to have engineered his overthrow.

In a letter dated September 27 and addressed to the Cyprus Stock Exchange, Company Secretary Antonis Hadjirousou wrote that Lordos had been replaced as chairman by Petros Petrides and that two board directors had resigned.

Lordos Hotels is one of the island's largest hotel owner and operator groups. Its crown jewels are Larnaca's Golden Bay beach Hotel and the Golden Coast beach Hotel in the Protaras area.

A stock market guide published by CISCO in May 1998 lists Lordos as one of the main shareholders with a 22.8 per cent stake, followed by Takis Kyriakides with 13.5 per cent and Dimitris Lordos, brother of Constantinos, with 13 per cent. It put the value of the company's property (land and buildings) at £22.6 million as of December 31 1996.

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Wednesday, September 29, 1999

[08] Monks insist their undecayed abbot is a saint

MONKS at a remote monastery near Larnaca are divided over whether the undecayed remains of their long deceased abbot are enough to make him a saint.

When monks at the Panayia Galactotrofousa Monastery near Larnaca recently exhumed the corpse of Abbot Chrysostomos, who died in 1988, they found that his body had hardly decomposed and that his right hand, which was holding a Bible, was intact. The Bible itself was perfectly preserved.

In accordance with monastic tradition, the body was exhumed in 1991 for the bones to be washed and stored away, but the monks were shocked to find that the body had hardly decomposed and did not smell.

"We were very surprised to find that, besides his head, the body remained virtually intact," current Abbot Agapios told Politis.

He said although the body did not have the distinctive sweet smell of sainthood, it did not smell bad: "This indicates sainthood."

But Bishop Epiphanios, the leader in Cyprus of the old-calendar Julian tradition followed by the monastery, disagrees, believing the body was preserved by minerals in the soil. He ordered that the body be reburied.

The four monks remaining at the monastery refused to comply with his wishes and kept Chrysostomos' body in a chamber next to the church.

Bishop Epiphanios yesterday confirmed the story to the Cyprus Mail, and said he believed the body's preservation had more to do with the quality of the soil around the monastery.

"Abbot Chrysostomos was not a saint," he added.

He said the leadership of the Julian Church in Greece had been informed of the incident, and agreed that Abbot Chrysostomos should be reburied.

Chrysostomos built the monastery, which lies approximately 10 kilometres from the village of Kornos, in 1948.

Three of the monastery's 17 monks were murdered by the Turks when the original building was razed during intercommunal violence in 1964. Chrysostomos himself was left badly injured in the attack.

The monks were forced to move to the nearby Ayia Thekla nunnery, until Chrysostomos decided to begin rebuilding the Monastery in 1977.

The handful of Julian monasteries are not recognised by the Orthodox Church of Cyprus and do not receive any funds from the Archbishopric, although relations remain cordial.

They still follow a calendar introduced by Roman emperor Julius Caesar in 46 BC, refusing to adopt the current calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in the sixteenth century.

The Greek and Cypriot orthodox churches have switched to the Gregorian calendar, even though their Russian and Serbian counterparts, as well as the Patriarchate of Constantinople, remain faithful to the old calendar, which runs 13 days late.

© Copyright Cyprus Mail 1999

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Wednesday, September 29, 1999

[09] Salamis: the human side of a historic excavation

A NEW book detailing the "human side" of 22 years of excavations at the ancient city site of Salamis, now under Turkish occupation, will be launched in Nicosia today.

The text of the book, Excavating at Salamis in Cyprus 1952-1974, enriched with over 200 photographs, was written by renowned Cypriot archaeologist Dr Vassos Karageorghis, author of more than 70 books, who was personally involved in the excavations.

The 22 years of excavations at Salamis were no doubt the largest in extent and among the most important carried out in Cyprus in the last 50 years, continuing until the very week of the invasion.

Much has already been written about the excavations, but this is the first non-scientific book.

"There is however an aspect of the 22 years of excavations at Salamis which is not quite so well known: the human aspect," said Karageorghis. "How a handful of archaeologists and technicians managed to deal with the enormous problems of excavation and restoration. How the citizens of Famagusta and the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages participated in the this venture throughout."

Anna Marangou, who penned one of the appendices to the book, said yesterday that residents from the nearby villages of Ayios Georghios and Engomi had taken part in the work.

"I'm especially happy that these memories and pictures have been put together in one volume to pass on to our children and grandchildren," she said.

Salamis flourished for almost 15 centuries from the period of its foundation in the 11th century BC as the most important ancient kingdom of Cyprus.

During the classical period, it was considered to be the capital of the island and the champion among all other kingdoms in the wars of independence against the Persians.

Salamis was destroyed by repeated earthquakes in the middle of the 4th century AD but was quickly rebuilt as a Christian city by the Emperor of Constantinople, Constantius.

The Arab invasions of the 7th century AD put an end to the life of the ancient city of Salamis. Traces of the fire which destroyed the city were still visible on the sandstone surface of the walls of the public buildings when they were excavated, and thick layers of ash were mixed with fallen debris all over the city.

In the past 50 years, Salamis became a national monument, a symbol for the Greeks of Cyprus. Its public buildings, especially its large theatre, were often used after restoration for the presentation of Greek tragedies.

Karageorghis' book, with its 206 pages of text and 242 photographs both black and white and colour, provides easy reading and is bound to bring back memories of unforgettable experiences.

"Of all my books, this book is the closest to my heart," Karageorghis told journalists yesterday. "I wanted to give something to the wider public, not something scientific but something emotional."

Excavating at Salamis in Cyprus

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