Al Jazeera :
Mustafa, his wife and their four children felt a sense of relief last summer as they entered a condominium overlooking the shimmering Mediterranean Sea.
After 10 years of hardship, during which they first fled Syria’s brutal war and then Lebanon’s relentless economic crisis, the family arrived in Cyprus a year ago in the hope of having a stable, dignified life.
“We all felt very overwhelmed and stressed,” Mustafa said, recounting their experience at the camp that first hosted them. “I wanted to find a place for us to move to, and a Syrian friend of mine recommended this place.”
This place is in the coastal village of Chloraka, just north of the city of Paphos. However, just about a month after moving in, Mustafa was told by the authorities he could not live there any more.
Asylum seekers in Cyprus are allowed to move out of government-run reception centres after they submit their asylum applications and give authorities a new address. They are not permitted to work while their application is pending, though the government provides them with a modest monthly welfare cheque.
With tourism dwindling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a compound owner in Chloraka began renting out the flats at cheaper rates. Through word of mouth, many Syrians such as Mustapha moved in and joined others who had already settled there the previous years.
But in January, the Cypriot interior ministry implemented a decree that banned asylum seekers from moving to Chloraka, citing demographic changes and “social problems”.
“The authorities at the camp didn’t say anything about that when I presented my address and lease in May,” Mustafa said. “If they’d told me I wasn’t allowed to live in Chloraka, I would have stayed in the camp. I’m not here to break laws.”
Interior ministry spokesman Loizos Michael said Cyprus, a small island on the eastern Mediterranean, has been struggling to implement an integration strategy in the face of skyrocketing numbers of asylum seekers.
“What we are going to do is decrease the numbers, disperse the people around the island and not gather them in one single area, which would help integrate them in the schools, community and labour force,” Michael said.
He noted that some 1,500 of Chloraka’s 4,000 residents are Syrians, adding that they have been involved in what he described as the “ghettoisation” of some communities.
But Mustafa and other struggling Syrians at the compound, including some with no option but to informally take up manual labour, said moving elsewhere was a challenge. After getting a 1,020 euro ($1,153) cheque in July, Mustafa was surprised to see the next month that he had not received any money. When he visited the local welfare office to inquire, he was informed he could no longer live in Chloraka.
The authorities then gradually reduced the payment to 265 euros ($300), and he now has until the new year to change his address.
But with his limited budget, it has been tough for Mustapha to make a down payment to secure a flat. He also said some landlords told him they did not want to have refugees and asylum seekers as tenants.
