Paris Demetriades
In recent years, violent attacks and beatings targeting vulnerable delivery riders, usually of Asian origin, have become an everyday occurrence, particularly in Limassol. The latest incident, which took place in broad daylight, during rush hour on a main avenue, happened to be filmed by a witness. Yet more than a hundred attacks have been recorded in less than three years.
Why so much violence against the most vulnerable among us, the modern-day slaves of our society? At the most basic level, class-based racism must surely play a central role. That became apparent the other day when, probably because of the video, the police were finally forced to do their job and immediately identified the attackers, who were of Russian origin. Clearly, Cypriots do not have a monopoly on racism. For some troubling reason, people in general adopt racist behavior under certain conditions. And that is perhaps the most important question demanding an answer: What conditions have developed in our own country that have not only hatched the serpent’s egg but also allowed this venomous snake to slip so far beyond our control that it now roams freely, literally beating up whoever crosses its path?
we would also do well to ask ourselves whether we are doing anything meaningful to confront it. Or do we simply express horror whenever we hear of another attack, then look the other way because
And why is this violence so much more pronounced in Limassol? Beyond the obvious need to condemn such outrageous incidents in the strongest terms and to demand that the police act swiftly and effectively every time—not just when there is a video—we also need to examine the social forces behind them. We urgently need at least to attempt to understand the roots of the problem.
Can this everyday, physical, all-too-literal violence really be separated, for example, from the broader, less literal violence residents experience through the ruthless gentrification transforming the city in recent years? Shouldn’t these two developments be seen as interconnected? Someone will naturally ask: Does it make sense for anger and rage to be directed at poor migrants? Unfortunately, it seems that it does. Certainly not fairly. Certainly not rightly. But in a way that can be explained.
That is because our vulnerable, poor—and often physically slight—fellow residents are clearly easy targets for cowardly bullies susceptible to the far-right narrative. Nor is this peculiar to our society. It is a grim reality that has spread across almost all of Europe in recent years.
It is also worth saying that many of these attacks are not driven solely by this sickening form of class-based racism. In many cases, complaints and witness accounts indicate that the attackers are young men or teenagers from poor neighborhoods, venting their pent-up testosterone in the worst possible way: on the unfortunate delivery rider, who, besides being vulnerable, usually carries cash—and sometimes perhaps drugs, too, according to claims being heard increasingly often lately.
The traffic chaos, which has spiraled completely out of control in recent years, once again, particularly in Limassol, cannot be irrelevant to this discussion either. Personally, I have often come close to losing my temper while driving in gridlocked traffic. Does that justify the beating we saw in the viral video? Of course not. But if you are already a disturbed misanthrope and furious about the traffic as well, the despair you feel on the road certainly does nothing to help.
In any case, our attention must remain on the state and the authorities: on what is being done and what is not being done about this violence. As a society, though, we would also do well to ask ourselves whether we are doing anything meaningful to confront it. Or do we simply express our horror whenever we hear of another attack, then look the other way because, as the silent, respectable majority, we collectively couldn’t care less about our modern-day slaves?
