Cyprus on the EU front line for asylum seekers

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

KOFINOU, Cyprus (AFP) — The island of Cyprus is now on the immigration frontline, since joining the European Union in 2004, it has the highest intake per capita of population of asylum seekers.

According to the United Nations, 11,000 applications are waiting to be processed. And more than 99 percent of those submitted in 2007 were rejected.

Rachel had never heard of the tiny divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus when she boarded a boat and made her escape from Nigeria, where she said she faced being forcibly circumcised.

Now more than two years later, the 24-year-old nurse and dozens of other refugees from Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Cameroon are stuck in a rural holding centre for asylum seekers, the only one of its kind in EU member Cyprus....